


two slow dancers (last ones out)

by taoslefteyelid



Series: everything you feel is good (if you would only let you) [1]
Category: EXO (Band), Z.Tao (Musician)
Genre: Friends to Lovers, M/M, Mutual Pining, References to Depression, a lot of mitski lyrics, alcohol mention, also i want to write a chankai sequel but. who knows., chanyeol is zitao's brother fight me, mitski lyrics, please give sehun a hug and warm cuddles i wrote this fic and i want to give him a Break, pretentious moral exploration bc it's me, this is a happy fic i swear it's just heavy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-22
Updated: 2019-11-22
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:55:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 26,796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21524833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taoslefteyelid/pseuds/taoslefteyelid
Summary: And Sehun wonders, if the Earth has ever loved the Moon as much as Zitao loves him.
Relationships: Huang Zi Tao | Z.Tao & Park Chanyeol, Huang Zi Tao | Z.Tao/Oh Sehun, Kim Jongin | Kai & Oh Sehun, Kim Jongin | Kai/Park Chanyeol
Series: everything you feel is good (if you would only let you) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1551373
Comments: 22
Kudos: 49





	two slow dancers (last ones out)

**Author's Note:**

> hello everyone I'm back! it's been a while since I've posted for something that isn't a fic fest (side note: lot of stuff comes out in december dsfjakjsd) so!!! I would like to present this smalltown fic which is basically a case study in emotion and how emo I can get on main before someone calls me out. ALSO! the first time I've added chankai as a side pairing, which, considering how much I enjoy chankai is surprising. anyways, I hope you enjoy the fic!

“Well,” Sehun sighs as he walks out of the bus station. There’s no one around. “I wasn’t expecting banners or anything, but a ride home would’ve been nice.” 

The lack of either of his parents in their beat up Toyota means that Sehun has to walk back home in the cold while hauling his large suitcase along with him, and he’s really not looking forward to it. 

This is exactly why Sehun doesn’t like coming home from college. Something or the other always goes wrong during his arrival. Last year it was that stupid squirrel attack. Sehun shudders. 

It doesn’t help that the only way to get home from college includes the long, uncomfortable bus ride that drops him in the outskirts of his town (which is in the middle of nowhere already) at 2 am, every single time, without fail. 

Sehun tilts his neck from side to side, huffs, and starts to pull the suitcase along with him. No use waiting. 

He’s already on guard for angry squirrels, but then he sees the headlights coming up. Great. An axe murderer probably. This is it, Sehun’s dead, and he was killed by someone driving a-

He turns around to look at the car. A Maserati? In his town? 

Staring at the little trident on a car is a very powerful distraction from said car hurtling towards you, Sehun learns. Luckily, he doesn’t get run over, because the car stops dead in its tracks. Sehun notices it’s an older model, second-hand probably. Makes sense. No one in this town would have enough money to buy a premium sports car. Sehun wonders if he could hitch a ride. 

All that is tossed out of his mind when he sees who emerges from the car, though. 

“Zitao?” 

And sure enough, there he is, Huang fucking Zitao, Sehun’s childhood best friend, with the same ungodly amount of piercings he had in during their graduation, completing the whole “I’ll fuck your shit up” look with ripped jeans and a stupid button down with the sleeves  _ rolled up _ . Sehun isn’t one to describe outfits, but he’s always made an exception for Zitao. 

“Sehun? Is that you?”

His voice is more smooth than Sehun remembers it, and the surprise in his tone makes Sehun feel like running away.

Sehun snorts, trying not to blush as Zitao inches closer. The last time the two of them had talked, Sehun had been drunk and sobbing. Zitao had carried him home. Sehun never even got to thank him for it. Or say goodbye. 

“No, it’s the ghost of Old Man Jim. Of course it’s me.” 

Sehun cringes slightly at how that comes out. Why’s he being so defensive?

He doesn’t have time to think about that, because he’s being picked up in a hug and whirled around. He blushes. 

Ah. Of course. The old crush explains the defensiveness. Sehun had almost-  _ almost _ \- forgotten about how flustered Zitao’s existence makes him.

Zitao finally puts him down (how the fuck does he even do that, how is he strong enough to do that, Sehun is like less than an inch shorter than him) and steps away. He’s smiling. 

“It’s been so long!”, he says, and holy fuck Sehun is  _ so  _ red right now. 

“Uh huh,” Sehun mumbles, silently willing himself to not look at Zitao’s stupid earrings. “Four years, I think,” he says, looking at Zitao’s earrings. 

Zitao’s still smiling as he regards Sehun in the headlights. Sehun tries not to crawl and hide inside his sweater. 

“You got prettier,” Zitao says softly, and Sehun is about to choke. “I didn’t even think that was possible.” 

Sehun suddenly feels like he’s 17 again and that’s not a good feeling to have, ever, but he can’t do anything about it because his treacherous brain won’t stop whispering about how Zitao has filled out and looks strong enough to throw him now. Then he remembers that Zitao carried him home that night when he was drunk and crying and he realises that Zitao has always been strong enough to throw him and maybe he should stop spiraling because things are starting to get real confusing. 

“You can’t just say that,” Sehun blurts out, and he instantly regrets it. If he could dive into the center of the Earth, he would. 

Zitao laughs. 

“What are you doing back here?”, he asks, sparing Sehun from that horrible thread of conversation that would either have led to Sehun opening his suitcase and climbing inside it or grabbing Zitao by the collar and confessing how he had had a crush on him all through high school and maybe still entertained thoughts of Zitao at night in his dorm when the moon would glance in through the window. 

“Oh, you know. I’m on break till next semester.”

And he’s not planning on going back, but Zitao doesn’t need to know about that. Not yet. 

“Oh yeah, you took a gap year, I almost forgot. I just finished up with college, I’m taking a break before I start doing all that responsible adult stuff.”

Sehun tries to say something, but he just nods instead. Zitao seems to finally realise that it’s 2 am. 

“What are you doing out here all alone?”    
  


“I- uh, my parents. I think they forgot that I was coming. And my phone ran out of battery, so-” 

“Jesus, you must be freezing. Get in, I’ll drop you.” 

Sehun pauses.

“You sure?”, but there’s no point asking, because Zitao is already picking up Sehun’s suitcase and shoving it in his car. 

“Just get in, Hun-ah.”

Sehun tries to calm his heart because Zitao’s had this nickname for him since eighth grade but it doesn’t work. They used to be best friends, and even though they drifted when the crush got too much for Sehun to handle, they’d always gotten along the most out of anyone in their whole year. 

Sehun gets in the car, and sighs, trying to keep his palms from sweating. 

Home sweet home.

\---

“You know,” Zitao says as they’re five minutes away from Sehun’s house. “This kinda reminds me of when I first got my learner’s license and you needed to go to that dance camp in the next town.” 

Oh no. Dance camp. Sehun’s done his best to block that out of his memory.

“My hero,” Sehun mumbles out, before he realises what he’s actually said. Zitao laughs. 

“Last time you called me that was when I bought you more chocolate milk than your parents allowed you to have in like sixth grade.” 

Sehun turns. Zitao looks good when he’s driving. 

“It was  _ amazing  _ chocolate milk.” 

“I wasn’t gonna give my allowance away for mediocre chocolate milk, Sehun.” 

“Of course not. We both have class.” 

Zitao laughs as he pulls into Sehun’s driveway. 

“We should’ve stayed in touch,” he says as the car stops. 

Sehun fidgets. They should’ve, but Sehun had already started pushing himself away from Zitao because of the way his crush had metastasized in junior year, and by senior year the only time they interacted was when they were bailing each other out of things. It’s his fault. Another royal fuck up by Oh Sehun. 

“Well,” he says, instead of dumping out his inner monologue like he would’ve the year him and Zitao met. Fourth grade was a weird time. Sehun had no filter back then. “You know I’m in town now. We can always hang out?”

Sehun is surprised his voice hasn’t cracked yet, considering just how much he feels like a teenager right now. 

“Oh yeah, you can count on it. Keep an eye out, I’m not letting you rest the whole time you’re here.” 

“Take me to Impasta for pizza and then we’ll talk.” 

“See, there’s the Sehunnie I know.” 

Sehun looks down. 

“I missed you,” he offers. It’s true. He’s missed Zitao since before they even left for college. 

“Me too,” and Zitao’s voice is impossibly soft. It shouldn’t be. Zitao shouldn’t even be talking to him, not when Sehun has effectively ghosted him for six years now. “Now go, inform your negligent parents that you’re here.” 

Sehun fidgets with the door handle, until Zitao steps out. Sehun follows. 

“Drive safe,” Sehun says, trying to ignore the way his heart is racing. Zitao makes his way over to take Sehun’s suitcase out the back, and Sehun watches silently. It’s awkward. They’ve never been awkward.

“No promises,” Zitao says as he hands Sehun the suitcase handle. “Who would I be if I didn’t break the rules?” 

Sehun has flashbacks to sitting in his room, bandaging Zitao’s hand. 

_ “You need to stop doing this.”  _

_ “Ah, come on, who would I be if I didn’t break the rules?”  _

_ Sehun ignores him.  _

_ “Hold still,” he mumbles. “This will sting.”  _

_ Zitao doesn’t seem to register the pain. _

_ “Boring. I’d be boring.”  _

“You weren’t that much of a rule breaker. All you did was get into fights a lot.” 

Zitao laughs as he gets in the car. 

“Still counts.” 

“Uh huh. The fact that you were an Honors student means nothing.” 

“Nothing at all,” Zitao yells from inside the car. He glances at Sehun through the window, waves, and then he’s driving off, leaving Sehun in his driveway with a heavy suitcase, overwhelming nostalgia and guilt, and the careful twinge of the heartache he’d learnt to live with all those years ago. It’s now that it hits him like a freight train, hits him all over again that Sehun’s been just a little bit in love with Huang Zitao for a long time, and still is. 

Sehun sighs. He needs to sleep this off. 

\---

When Sehun wakes up, his parents aren’t home. This is normal. Both of them work, even when he’s home, and he doesn’t really mind. Breaks are  _ meant _ for sleeping till 3 pm. Even though he loves them, his parents are negligent anyway (seriously, how do you forget your son is coming home from college?). 

Sehun’s alarm is usually set as the Brooklyn Nine Nine theme song, and when he jolts awake at a sudden ringing, he thinks maybe it’s that, but then he remembers he didn’t set his alarm. He never does, not when he’s home. 

That means it’s the doorbell, and Sehun wonders if maybe he slept till 5 pm when his dad comes home, but one glance at his phone debunks that. As he shuffles to the front door, in his ratty pajamas that he’s had since senior year that are a bit too short at the ankles, he wonders if maybe it’s a murderer, or worse, a door to door salesman. Do they even have those anymore? Sehun doesn’t know, but he guesses he’s willing to take the chance as he opens the door. 

“Hi,” Zitao says, and Sehun almost smacks his face into the door due to an involuntary muscle spasm. 

“What?”, he asks, less of a “what do you want?” and more of a “what the fuck.” 

“I brought you flowers,” and sure enough, Zitao has a huge bouquet in hand. Sehun’s about to pass out.

“Hi,” Sehun says, mentally hitting himself for taking so long to catch up. It’s like the rest of the world is moving in HD 1080p while he’s buffering at 240p. “Good morning,” he tries, in an attempt to make it less awkward. 

“Your bedhead is cute,” Zitao says, shoving the bouquet into Sehun’s hands. “Can I come in?” 

Sehun’s head is reeling with how fast everything is going, and he’s suddenly been reminded of how direct Zitao always is. 

“Uh, yeah, yeah, come in,” he says, stepping aside. “What are you doing here?” 

“I told you,” Zitao says, stepping in and grinning at Sehun. He has leaves in his hair. “No rest for the whole time you’re here.” 

The bouquet looks like it’s made of roses and what look like acacia flowers. Sehun worked in the local flower shop on Saturday’s when he was in his second year of college, so he kinda recognises them. He also recognises where Zitao got them from. There’s only one florist in their town. 

“That includes flowers?” 

Zitao smiles lazily, the way the sun rises on slow mornings where the world is taking its time. 

“You always complained about how flowers should be a bigger part of social life. I remember that month in sophomore year where you refused to go anywhere without a flower crown.”

“Oh my god,” Sehun says, face reddening as he sets the bouquet down on the coffee table. “Oh my god, I forgot I did that.” 

“It was adorable. You made me wear one too, even though daisies definitely didn’t go with my outfit.” 

Sehun buries his face in his hands. 

“Why did you ever willingly associate with me?” 

_ He’s not the one that stopped, _ Sehun’s traitorous brain whispers. Sehun tells himself to fuck off. 

“It was cute, Hun-ah,” Zitao says. Stupid, stupid nickname. “So cute.” 

“Shut up,” Sehun mumbles. “How come you never had an annoying cringey phase?” 

Zitao leans forward, grinning. There’s very little space between them. 

“I have panache,” he whispers, and the grin on his face spells nothing but trouble, and it’s been so long that Sehun has known Zitao, and six years since he stopped knowing him, but Sehun is still struck by just how much Zitao looks like he could fuck your life up. For as long as Sehun has known him, though, for as long as Sehun has been his best friend, Zitao has always been the kindest person he’s known. 

Sehun smacks his chest with the back of his hand. Jesus Christ, that’s one firm chest. 

“Shut up, that’s my line.” 

It is. Sehun used to say that in response to everything in high school. He hasn’t said it in a while. 

“Alright, alright, don’t smack me, I have sensitive skin.” 

That’s a lie if Sehun’s ever heard one. Zitao’s gotten on a black eye on Friday and then shown up on Monday without a mark on his face. 

They stand and stare at each other, smile still plastered on Zitao’s face, light blush dusting Sehun’s face like it always has when Zitao’s around.

“Anyways,” Zitao says after a moment. “I’m here to take you out for lunch. Brunch. Whatever you have at 11 am.” 

Surely there are laws against old crushes/estranged best friends sneaking back into your life. Though this wasn’t exactly sneaking. No, Zitao’s just running full speed in, and Sehun can feel himself getting swept off his feet already. 

It’s not fair. It’s not fair how Zitao can still be so ready to do things with and for Sehun, it’s not fair how he still remembers things about Sehun. It’s not fair how his face still makes Sehun feel stupid things that make no sense.

He doesn’t say anything about that, though. 

“You have leaves in your hair,” he points out instead. Zitao’s hands fly to his hair, brushing the one place where there are no leaves. Sehun huffs. 

“Here, let me,” he says, casually brushing yellowed leaves onto the floor of his house, as if his fingertips aren’t thrumming. “How did you even get them in here in the first place?” 

“It’s fall, leaves are everywhere.” 

A reasonable explanation. 

“You’re an idiot.” 

“Uh huh,” Zitao says, agreeing. “So, brunch?” 

Sehun considers it. 

“Sure,” he decides. “You’ll have to wait here though, I need to change.”

And then Sehun remembers that he’s standing there in his old pajamas which have little baby whales on them and he kinda wants to die because he looks like a mess. Zitao doesn’t seem to notice, though. 

“Take your time,” he says, and when he smiles, his eyes do the same twinkly thing they always used to do back in the day. 

Sehun is so fucked.

\---

“Has nothing here changed at all?”, Sehun asks, as they pass by the old house that’s been abandoned since the Wu’s moved out in ninth grade. 

“I wouldn’t know,” Zitao answers. “I’ve only been here for two weeks now.” 

“Ah.” 

It’s still not cold enough for Sehun to be wearing a jacket in the afternoon, but he’s wearing one anyway. His outfit needed to look cute.

“So,” Zitao asks, turning around so that he’s facing Sehun as he walks backwards. “How’s my favourite Sehun been?” 

Sehun raises his eyebrows. 

“You know more Sehuns?” 

Zitao considers it.

“Hmm, actually, no. I just wanted to call you my favourite.” 

“Oh my god, shut up.” 

Sehun can feel himself turning pink and he hates it. Why did he have to be an easy blusher? Pink doesn’t go with his outfit. 

“I did meet another Chanyeol, though. Our Chanyeol got competitive about it when I told him. Told me that he was the first Chanyeol I met, so he was the only Chanyeol that mattered.” 

“Your brother is insane,” Sehun manages to say, still recovering from Zitao’s dumb, dumb words.

“Don’t be mean, he loves you, he’d be heartbroken if you heard him say that.” 

“Whenever I saw him in senior year he’d glare at me like I’d committed murder.” 

Zitao’s expression shifts to a softer, sadder smile. Sehun wants to run away. 

“Yeah, that was- uh-” 

“Oh, what the fuck, they closed Happy Cones?” 

Sehun interrupts Zitao mostly because he doesn’t want to hear whatever Zitao is using that soft, gentle tone to say, but also because he’s genuinely distressed that the local ice cream place has seemingly shut down. 

“Oh damn,” Zitao says, in his normal tone, stopping to look. “I think they did.”

“No way. It used to be the one place I could always drag you to after school got out.”

“Please,” Zitao snorts. “You once dragged me all the way over to the next town past the highway, and I still let you. My parents were  _ so  _ mad.” 

Sehun remembers that. He remembers Zitao holding his hand as they crossed the highway, because they had no regard for their own safety in ninth grade, he remembers running into the next town and immediately proclaiming that it was boring. He remembers Zitao following him around without a single complaint. His heart aches. 

“You had fun,” Sehun mumbles.

“I did. But the point I’m trying to make is that you used to be able to drag me  _ anywhere _ .” 

Sehun pouts. It’s almost out of habit.

Zitao laughs, and he hooks his arm around Sehun’s shoulders, pulling him into his side. 

“You’re too cute for your own good,” Zitao says, as they resume walking. “Maybe if you pout like that at the owners of Happy Cones, they’ll reopen the place.” 

Sehun’s heart is doing cartwheels as Zitao’s fingertips casually brush his neck. 

“Uh huh,” he says, trying to mask the thrum in his voice. “First, Happy Cones. Then, world domination.” 

“I’ll be your dumb sidekick. I’ll drive you everywhere and hold your flower crown for you when you need to bust out the pout.” 

“We can get matching costumes.” 

“Pink. Sparkly. I get sunglasses, you get fake rhinestones.” 

Sehun hums, relaxing into Zitao’s hold, walking like they used to on their way back from school. 

“You’re so dumb,” he says. “The dumbest ever.” 

“That’s why you love me.” 

Sehun tries not to choke. Zitao lets his arm drop from Sehun’s shoulders. 

“Here we are,” he says, as he abruptly stops walking. Sehun looks up, and he’s hit by a billion memories. 

“Oh my god, Blue Diner, I haven’t been here in  _ ages _ .”

“I know you like Mrs. Kim’s pancakes. I also wanted to talk to Jongin, so it worked out.”

There’s a sudden sour taste in Sehun’s mouth at that, all thoughts of blueberry pancakes being shoved out of his head. Jongin had been their friend in high school, they’d been in dance club together. Sehun tries not to jump to conclusions, but it’s hard. 

“Jongin, huh?”, he asks, trying to sound nonchalant as they enter the diner. It’s warm, and it smells like home. 

Zitao gives him a look, and nods. Sehun swallows. Does that mean…?

“You can grab a seat,” Zitao says. “I’ll talk to Jongin and I’ll give him our order too. Same as always?” 

“No, no. I want to meet him too, I’ll come along.” 

Zitao looks a little confused, but he smiles anyways. 

“To the kitchen then,” he says. “Jongin’s been working here, which means me and Chanyeol get free food a lot.” 

“Uh huh,” Sehun says, quietly. Logically, Sehun knows nothing about this situation. Zitao has just said Jongin’s name, but all that’s in his head right now is having to watch Zitao kiss one of their old friends in greeting. 

Instead, as they stand outside the kitchen, Zitao greets Jongin with a fist bump. 

“Hey,” he says, and his tone is the one he uses for friends he’s fond of, but isn’t overly close to. It’s a whole scale which they sat together and drew up in sixth grade, just for shits and giggles. Back when Sehun used to joke about how he was the most special person in Zitao’s life because he had a whole tone dedicated to him. “Chanyeol told me to tell you to come over tonight.” 

Jongin grins happily, before he pouts, and even though Sehun’s nerves are calmed by the way Zitao’s addressing him, he still feels ruffled. 

“And he couldn’t tell me this himself?” 

Zitao laughs. 

“I don’t know man, I owed him a favour and since I was already dropping by the diner today he asked me to tell you, that’s all I know.” 

“Fine,” Jongin mutters, before he notices Sehun. 

“Holy fuck, Sehun?” 

“Why is everyone so surprised to see me?”, Sehun asks, before he smiles at Jongin. Dance club with him was fun, now that he thinks of it without soul crushing jealousy clouding his mind.

“It’s been forever!”, Jongin exclaims. “How’ve you been?” 

“Awesome,” Sehun says, because he doesn’t want to start venting right next to Blue Diner’s kitchen. “What about you?” 

“I’m great! The diner keeps me busy enough. I’ve been helping out recently, it helps with the debt.” 

Both Sehun and Zitao nod in understanding at that. Jongin smiles at them until it looks like he suddenly remembers something.

“Uh, if you guys want, you can just tell me what you want to have, I’ll get it to you.” He winks at Sehun. “Priority order for an old friend.”

Zitao laughs.

“Thanks, Jongin, you make life so much easier. We’ll have two blueberry chocolate chip pancakes with a black coffee and a hot chocolate, please,” Zitao says. Sehun’s fingers itch when he realises that Zitao remembers his preference for hot chocolate in fall. 

“Cool, grab a booth, your food will get to you in no time,” Jongin says. “I have to go though, I’ll catch up with you two later!” 

“Thanks, you’re a star!”, Zitao yells, as Jongin rushes back into the kitchen. “Come on, Hun-ah, we’ve got to get your favorite booth.” 

“My favorite?”, Sehun asks, but he barely has time to finish his sentence before Zitao is tugging him across the diner. Sehun stumbles behind him, and then he’s being pulled into the booth on the far corner of the diner, the one up against the glass front and near the jukebox. 

He remembers then. 

_ “Do you have change?”  _

_ Zitao rustles through his pockets, and produces one, shiny coin. Sehun lights up.  _

_ “Put something on, please?”  _

_ It’s the same routine every time they come here. Sehun pretends that he doesn’t know that Zitao exchanges notes for coins every Sunday at the Laundromat, and Zitao pretends that this request is completely out of the blue. _

_ “What song?”, Zitao asks. _

_ “Any song,” and they’re still following the script. “Just, play something.”  _

_ “Okay.”  _

_ And Zitao does.  _

_ This time it’s a song Sehun doesn’t recognise, so he sinks down in his seat and tries to block out the fact that his heart rate speeds up when he puts his head on Zitao’s shoulder, even though they’ve done this a million times. He’s still in denial, but he won’t know that there’s anything to deny till a few months later.  _

_ Zitao opens his mouth. The script, every single time.  _

_ “Sing?”  _

_ “I don’t know this song.”  _

_ “Please?” _

_ And Sehun does. _

They’ve always sat on the same side of a booth, because that’s just how it’s always been, though in sophomore year it started making Sehun jittery to be so close to Zitao, and after that they stopped coming out to the diner together. 

Now though, their knees touch, and though one half of Sehun is freaking out, the other is calm and content, as if this is just right. 

Sehun hums as they settle in, the familiarity of the place wrapping around him. 

“I forgot how sweet Jongin is,” Sehun says, carefully testing the waters. He’s ruled out any romantic inclinations Zitao may have towards Jongin, but he’s still wary. 

“Yeah, ever since Chanyeol and him started dating, he’s been around a lot more. He’s fun,” Zitao says, and Sehun breathes a sigh of relief. He hates that he still gets jealous. He has no right to be, not after how he abandoned Zitao. “I feel like a third wheel though, so I don’t spend too much time with them.” 

Sehun laughs. 

“I remember when Chanyeol would grumble about having to hang out with us,” he says, thinking mostly of the entirety of seventh and eighth grade where Chanyeol had to stick with them because their parents wanted him to. “Guess it’s your turn now.” 

“It’s already better now that I have you back.” 

Maybe Sehun’s over analyzing, but Zitao chooses his words carefully. He’s not talking about Sehun coming back from college, and it cloys, just how both of them are aware of the gap five or so years create. He needs to say something to make it clear up, but Sehun is bad with words. 

“I really missed you,” is all he can come up with. It’s true, Sehun has missed Zitao with all his heart, but every time he says it, it feels like he doesn’t deserve to. 

Zitao turns to look at him. 

“You’re here now, you don’t have to keep saying that,” and there’s a smile on his face that makes Sehun want to cry. “I missed you too, no one else fixes me up like you do.” 

Sehun startles. If that means what he thinks he means, he’s not going to be doing a lot of fixing.

“You’re still getting into fights?”, and he says it loudly, harshly, and if there was anyone in the booths near them, they’d be staring at him. He wouldn’t care even if they were. 

Zitao raises his hands. 

“Just a few in college, it wasn’t that bad.” 

Sehun clutches his own knee tightly, angrily. 

“Hey,” Zitao says, and it’s softer. “I was okay, it was nothing I couldn’t handle.” 

“Shut the fuck up,” Sehun says. “Shut up, you don’t get to say that.” 

His breathing is uneven, ragged as he tries to keep his calm. He’s not been this worked up in a while, and the anger is still building.

“You don’t get to say that, you idiot. You didn’t have to wake up at 2 am just to find your best friend bleeding at your doorstep every other month.”

“Sehunnie-” 

The fights have always been an issue for them. Since high school started, Zitao had had a bad habit of getting into stupid, stupid fights, but once junior year rolled around they became more and more frequent. Early on in freshman year, Sehun had made Zitao promise to at least come to Sehun after the fights, if Zitao wouldn’t stop fighting, so that Sehun could at least patch him up. Zitao’s never broken a promise to Sehun.

“You remember the one time you collapsed? That was so scary, Zitao, I cried so much, you have no idea. Why are you still picking fights?” 

“They were one time things,” Zitao says, quiet, calm. “I promise. They didn’t even hurt me too bad. Just a few cuts and a busted lip this one time, that’s all.” 

“I hate you.” 

Zitao laughs, but it’s sad.

“I’m sorry, Hun-ah.”

Sehun finally looks at him. This is all wrong. This is all going so horribly wrong. 

“I just- Zitao, I-” 

His throat closes up, and he’s feeling entirely too much, and this is the exact opposite of how the past three years have been, and somehow it feels worse. 

“I get it. No more fights, I’m promising you.” 

Oh. A promise. 

“Promise?”, Sehun asks, because Zitao has never promised this before, mostly because he knew he couldn’t keep it.

“I promise you,” Zitao replies. “Come on, Hun-ah, I’ve never broken a promise to you.” 

He knows that. 

“If I hear about you getting in more fights, Huang Zitao, I’ll-“

Sehun’s about to say “never talk to you again” but then he remembers that he’s already done that. He’s saved from having to awkwardly fumble for something to say though, because just then, their food arrives. 

Sehun smiles and nods at their server, and both him and Zitao turn their attention to the stack of pancakes in front of them.

“Holy fuck,” Sehun breathes out. “They’re perfect.”

“Ah yes, our official pancake connoisseur is back in town. Judging from your reaction, it looks like these hit the mark already. What’s your preliminary rating, Sir Pancake Connoisseur?”

Zitao’s changing the topic, and somewhere in the back of his head, Sehun knows that they need to continue this conversation, but right now Zitao’s using the stupid radio announcer voice that he’d picked up after having to commentate on a few local football matches when he broke his ankle, and the pancakes look heavenly. Sehun readies his knife.

“A million out of ten,” he replies, just before stuffing his face. Brilliant. 

Zitao pulls his phone out. Sehun turns to him just in time for Zitao to take a photo of him with his mouth full. 

“Zitao!”, Sehun exclaims indignantly. Except, since his mouth is full, it sounds more like “Zithaorf!” 

Sehun takes a moment to swallow.

“It’s been so long, and the first photo you decide to take of me is  _ that _ ?”

“Pose then, I’ll take a photo of that too.”

Zitao used to take photos of everything back in the day, no matter how inconsequential Sehun found it. He once spent ten minutes trying to find the perfect angle to take a photo of a butterfly that decided to land on Sehun’s finger, by which time said butterfly had already flown away.

Sehun rolls his eyes, but he humors Zitao anyways, his default awkward peace sign already out. He pulls the cutest smile he can, winking for good measure. 

Zitao shows him his phone.

“Happy?”

Sehun looks cute as fuck.

“See? Look at how adorable I can look when I’m actually trying.”

“You never have to try.”

Sehun’s mouth parts, and he looks down hurriedly. He can’t let Zitao see him blush. In theory, Sehun knows Zitao has a habit of going on and on about how cute Sehun is and he really shouldn’t get so flustered about it, but in practice he just can’t stop it from creeping in. 

They fall silent for a while, both digging into their pancakes. 

“Do you still like chocolate bubble tea?”, Zitao asks as Sehun’s fork finally has no more pancakes to attack. 

“Do I still like- What sort of question is that?”, Sehun asks, familiar mock offence plastered on his face. “Of course I still like chocolate bubble tea.”

Zitao raises his hands.

“I forgot you felt so passionately about it,” he laughs. “The next town over now has a bubble tea place, so one of these days I’ll take you there.”

“You better.”

Zitao smiles.

“Anyways, wanna get out of here?”, he asks. Sehun barely has time to respond before Zitao’s hand is on his wrist. 

It’s only when Sehun has been pulled out of the diner that he realises that they haven’t paid.

“Are we pulling off Grand Theft Pancake?”

Zitao gives him a weird look, before laughing.

“They’ll just put it on my tab, we aren’t stealing.”

“Oh yeah, I forgot you were rich now, what with that Maserati and everything.” 

“Please,” Zitao laughs. “The car isn’t even mine, it’s Chanyeol’s. And it’s second hand, I don’t even know how much he paid for it.” 

“He lets you use it?”, Sehun asks. Chanyeol’s always been possessive of his things. He’s also always been possessive of Zitao.

“Uh, sometimes. In exchange I clean it for him when I clean my motorcycle.” 

Sehun feels his stomach drop to the pits of hell because he did not hear Zitao just say the words “my motorcycle”. 

“Your what now?”, he chokes out, barely breathing. 

“My motorcycle,” Zitao says, as if Sehun’s insides are not currently making plans to move to Berlin. “I got it in the first year of college, it gets me around quicker than a car would. I still want that Lambo, though, but I’m guessing my fifth grade fantasies can wait.” 

“Ah. Are you ever gonna show me it?” 

Sehun doesn’t know why he asks that, considering that so far, he’s not exactly wanted to get a fast pass to free death by choking. 

“I can take you to Impasta on it if you want?”

“Tonight?”

“I mean, if you don’t have any plans, I don’t wanna steal you-” 

“I would cancel any plans for pizza and you.” 

Sehun is surprised at how easily that comes out. He looks away suddenly, down at the pavement they’re walking on, kind of flustered, not knowing what to do with his hands or his face or just himself in general. 

And then, of course, Zitao swoops in to save the day.

“I  _ cannot _ believe that pizza gets first billing.” 

Sehun feels some of the tension that’s been plaguing him since he got back leave his shoulders. 

“Sorry,” Sehun shrugs. “No matter how much I sound like I was a Tumblr kid in 2014, pizza comes first.” 

Zitao pokes Sehun’s stomach, which causes Sehun to yelp and shove him off the pavement. 

“You’re a menace,” Zitao says as he steps back near Sehun, dramatically massaging his arm. “That hurt.” 

“Oh shut up, I have the upper body strength of a jellyfish.”

There’s a pause for a few seconds, and then they’re both laughing, and Sehun can feel some of the awkwardness that’s built up for six years fade away. Sehun is walking on the streets of the town he was born in with his best friend, and he’s laughing like nothing matters, and in that moment it truly seems like nothing does.

“I’m gonna call you that from now on,” Zitao says, still kinda laughing. “Sehun who? I only know Jellyfish Arms.” 

“Please do not assign me an involuntary fursona.” 

Zitao snorts, and then promptly chokes on thin air. He stops walking, doubling over as he coughs, and Sehun worriedly hits his back. 

“You,” Zitao gasps out, after he’s finally done coughing, “Are going to be the death of me. Literally.” 

“All I said was that I didn’t want to be a furry, you’re the one who snorted like that.” 

“Immaterial,” Zitao says, “You’ve been back for what, 12 hours? And yet, you’ve almost killed me three times.”

“I have  _ not _ .” 

“First, you almost gave me a heart attack by standing in the middle of the road like that at one in the morning. Then you pushed me off the pavement-” 

“You  _ barely  _ stumbled-” 

“-into the  _ road _ , Hun-ah. What if there was traffic?” 

Sehun is so close to slapping Zitao. 

“And then three, you made me snort so that I’d choke. I’m onto you.” 

“If I wanted to kill you, I’d do it in a way that won’t get me caught.”

“I have never even been remotely mean to you, why do you want me dead so bad, Hun-ah?” 

Sehun pretends to think. 

“There  _ was  _ that one time when you borrowed an eraser from me and forgot to give it back.”

“Years of friendship, thrown away for an eraser?” 

“It was a Tombow eraser. My favorite one.” 

It seems like every second Sehun spends with Zitao, he remembers a little bit more of what life used to be like. The past few years have been so numb that Sehun has sort of forgotten who he is. Now, as he walks with Zitao, he remembers heartache and love and the pure, unadulterated happiness that Zitao’s always brought him. Sehun’s sure Zitao has changed, he can see it in the way he carries himself, but he can still feel that underneath everything Zitao is still the same. Sehun doesn’t know if he himself is the same, or if he’s different, but he’s slowly remembering. 

“I will buy you all the erasers I can to apologise,” Zitao says, and Sehun doesn’t even doubt it. “Please don’t murder me. You may have Jellyfish Arms, but I’m still terrified of you.” 

“You should be. I still remember those two wushu moves you taught me.” 

“Ah yes,” Zitao says. “Ma bu and Xie bu. The rest stances. I am quaking in fear.”

Sehun huffs, and rolls his eyes, ignoring Zitao’s stupid smile. He realises he has no idea where they’re going. 

“Hey, uh, are we just wandering aimlessly?”

Zitao blinks, as if just realising where they’ve been walking. 

“This… is the path to the woods, right? Not the lake side, though.”    
  


“Oh,” Sehun says, staring down the road. He remembers. “Yeah, it is.” 

They usually went to the lake back when they were in school, because Zitao had found a little clearing that they’d made their own, but the other side of the woods were always cool to venture into. Sehun remembers the one time they’d decided to have a mini picnic there. Zitao had taught him how to whistle, and some of the birds whistled back. 

“Wanna go?”, Zitao asks. It’s tentative, curious.

“To the woods? And do what?”

“I don’t know,” shrugs Zitao. “I don’t have any plans for today, and I’m free till five. If you’re busy, we can-”   
  
“I’m not busy,” Sehun laughs. “I never am when I’m here, all I do is sit at home and lounge. We can go.”

“Oh,” Zitao says, and his eyes are lit up. That’s when it hits Sehun how unsure Zitao must be feeling about this. Is he worried that Sehun will ignore him again? It weighs Sehun down, so he stops thinking about it. “Cool, it’ll be a nice walk after all those pancakes.” 

“Uh-huh,” Sehun says, nodding. The heaviness lingers, and it’s not because of pancakes. He puts his arm in Zitao’s, ignoring his brain screaming multiple curse words at him. “Lead the way.” 

Zitao smiles at him.

Sehun smiles back.

\---

“This is boring,” Sehun says, perched on a rock that’s been there forever. “How did we ever sit here for more than ten minutes?” 

“I don’t know,” Zitao replies, absently kicking a twig. “I think we just talked.” 

“Huh.” 

Zitao doesn’t say anything, so Sehun lets his eyes wander across the little spot in the woods they’ve found themselves in. He realises he remembers exactly when he came here last. 

_ “Sehun, I need you to focus.”  _

_ Sehun is 16 again, perched on the same rock. He’s too skinny and his hair is messy and Zitao is way too close to him, staring straight in his eyes.  _

_ “Hey,” Zitao smiles. “I lost you there for a second.”  _

_ “What?”  _

_ “I was saying, I need your help with Literature homework.” _

_ Sehun’s eyes search Zitao’s face, and his heart aches the most it ever has. Zitao’s face is right next to his, and Sehun resists the urge to put his hands on it, but in return, his hands twitch slightly. His legs twitch too, because there is nothing he wants to do more in that moment than run away.  _

_ “Sure,” he says, and his voice cracks.  _

_ Sehun avoids Zitao in school the next day.  _

“Earth to Sehun, I’m losing you.” 

Sehun blinks, and he almost expects Zitao to be right in his face like he was all those years ago. Zitao’s still kicking twigs. 

“Sorry, I was just thinking.” 

“That’s okay,” Zitao says. He bends, as if to pick up a twig, but then it seems that he thinks better of it. “Just think out loud, yeah? I missed your voice.”

Sehun wonders if there’s a universe out there where he’s not been infatuated with Zitao at some time. He wonders if he has ever truly breathed in a universe like that. 

Sehun calls what he has for Zitao infatuation, because it started so young, but the older he gets, the more he suspects that it’s something deeper, because it’s been years, most of which he spent avoiding Zitao, and him saying something as simple as telling Sehun he misses his voice still makes his heart skip a beat. Sehun’s legs twitch, but weakly. 

“Bones,” he says, instead of pouring out what sounds like the words to overrated slam poetry. His therapist would  _ so  _ not be proud of him. “Bones are stupid.” 

Zitao gives him a look. 

“That’s what you’re thinking about?” 

Sehun shrugs. Zitao tilts his head.

“Elaborate.” 

“Evolutionary plot holes. At least, human bones are.” 

Zitao sits down on the grass. His jeans are going to get ruined, but Sehun doesn’t say anything about it. 

“Go on.”

“So, in college, I took a dance class, right? And someone fucked their knee up, and that got me thinking. Knees fucking  _ suck _ . You use them too much, they give up on you. You use them a bit, they give up on you. You don’t use them?”

“They give up on you,” Zitao finishes, amused smile on his face. 

“And don’t even get me  _ started  _ on how fucked up spines are. The human body is designed to fail.” 

Zitao lets his legs sprawl out on the grass. 

“Tell you what. We’re in the middle of the thickest part of the woods. If Mother Nature or whatever is able to listen, she’ll probably do it here. Give your suggestions, bone expert.” 

“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.” 

Zitao flicks a pebble at him. Sehun dodges. 

“I’m so going to do it,” Sehun continues. An opportunity to yell in the middle of the woods? He’s never gonna give that up.

Zitao looks at him, expectantly. Sehun clears his throat. 

“Okay,” he says, louder than usual, which is still not very loud, but it’s a passable yell. “Number one. Emotions. What the  _ fuck  _ is up with those?” 

Zitao laughs. 

“What I  _ want _ ,” Sehun continues, “Is to float through an endless void while listening to lo-fi music. But I obviously can’t have that, so I’d settle for having an on/off button for emotions, thanks. Also, please let me crack my knuckles more than once in a two hour span.” 

“Oh, I wanna add something.” 

Sehun realises how ridiculous this is. He motions for Zitao to go for it anyways. 

“Hey, uh, Miss Nature? Can ankles stop being so ridiculously easy to twist? And uh, why do insects exist? Also,” and Zitao turns to Sehun for approval. “Knees kinda suck.” 

Sehun nods sagely. 

“Wonder if she’s gonna listen to us,” Sehun asks.

“Imagine that. The new evolution of the world. Humans with controllable emotions, and spines, knees and ankles of fucking steel. And an ecosystem that wouldn’t collapse without bugs.” 

“Sounds like the perfect world to me.” 

“You wouldn’t change anything else?” 

The questions sounds a little sad. Sehun feels it again, that crushing weight on his chest. 

“If it was up to me,” he breathes out, struggling to speak because of how air has been knocked out of his lungs. “I’d rebuild the entire universe, one star at a time. That’s what I would change.” 

\---

“I’ll be back at 7 to pick you up,” Zitao says, as they reach Sehun’s house. “I know it’s probably more efficient for us to stay together till then but I promised my mom I’d pick up her dry cleaning.” 

“You’re such a good kid,” Sehun laughs. “My parents always wanted me to be more like you.” 

“Really?”, Zitao asks. “I always thought they didn’t like me.”

“My dad thinks you have too many piercings and my mom didn’t like your haircut in freshman year, but otherwise they love you.” 

Zitao’s hand flies to his hair, and Sehun laughs. Zitao has the most comical look of hurt on his face. 

“What was wrong with my hair?” 

“You looked ridiculous,” Sehun says. “I was afraid to go out with you.” 

“My hair is not a joking matter, Oh Sehun.” 

“Go,” Sehun says, shoving Zitao slightly. “Run your errands. Don’t be late. And bring the motorcycle. You can forget yourself, not the motorcycle.” 

“Why am I friends with you again?” 

Sehun flips him off. Zitao laughs, already walking backwards. He waves at Sehun. 

Sehun turns around to enter his house, but he pauses. 

“Call me when you get home so I know you’re not dead,” he says, turning back to Zitao. For a second it looks like Zitao hasn’t heard him, already too far away. But the Zitao throws a peace sign up as he turns on the street, finally off the driveway, back to Sehun. 

“I will!”

\---

Sehun’s dad is already in the living room when he walks in. 

“There you are, I was wondering where you’d disappeared.” 

“Hi,” Sehun says, and he feels strangely exhausted. He’s familiar with the feeling by now. “I just popped down to the diner for a bit.” 

“Doesn’t the diner close from three to six?” 

“Yeah, but we went to the woods after.” 

Sehun huffs as he lets himself drop onto the couch, where his dad is watching TV. 

“We?”, he asks, wrapping his arm around Sehun’s shoulders. Sehun slumps against him. Him and his dad have always been close. “You look tired.” 

“Zitao’s here. We hung out.” 

“Ah,” his father says, and it’s soaked in a tone of realisation that Sehun hates. “Your delinquent boy?” 

Sehun closes his eyes. 

“He was my best friend since 4th grade, surely you know him better than just as a delinquent.” 

“I know many things about him, Sehunnie. Your mom-” 

“Can we not talk about this?”, Sehun says, as quickly as he can. His mother has known about the crush (and about his staggering not-straightness) for quite a bit now, but he really can’t picture having this conversation with his father. 

“Whatever you want, Sehunnie. I’m watching the news, are you gonna stay down here with me?” 

Sehun thinks about it. 

“Sure.” 

He doesn’t realise he’s not really been focusing on the TV screen until he hears an incessant ringing, and has to force his eyes to focus. He sits up, confused.

“Wh-“

He looks over at his dad, but he’s fast asleep, so Sehun decides to investigate for himself.

The sound has a distinct nostalgia surrounding it, though Sehun can’t really place it. He stumbles to the kitchen, and that’s where he sees it.

“Why the fuck do we still have a landline?”

Sehun realises he’s addressed the question to thin air, and leans over to pick up the phone. He holds his breath before holding it to his ear. This is either a telemarketer, or the beginning of a horror movie.

“Hello?”

Seriously, who uses the landline?

“Hi, uh, I realised that I don’t have your number, so I just called on here. I’m not dead.”

Sehun takes multiple seconds.

“Oh. That’s- that’s good.”

Sehun leans against the counter and covers his face with his hand. “That’s good”? Zitao probably thinks Sehun is plotting his murder.

“I know, right? Anyways, I’m coming over in an hour, just thought I’d remind you.”

“I didn’t forget,” Sehun says, as he scrambles for the time. It’s been an hour now, apparently.

“Didn’t think you did. I’ve got to go Hun-ah, wear something nice, okay?”

Sehun desperately tries not to blush even though Zitao isn’t there to see him. Thankfully, because he fails. 

“Bye,” he says, and it comes out too soft. The line cuts out. 

Sehun calmly puts the phone back, covers his face with his hands, and tries not to scream.

\---

Sehun had forgotten about the bluetooth speaker he bought for himself during his gap year, but now he’s digging it out of the cardboard box he stuffed all of his possessions which he wasn’t taking to college in. 

He connects his phone, puts his music on shuffle, and stares at his suitcase (which he still hasn’t unpacked). He doesn’t know what to wear. He continues glaring at his suitcase, as if it will take pity on him and magically produce an outfit he’ll like. 

Electric guitar fills the room as Sehun flops onto his bed. He still has time to get ready, and all of this is a little too much for him to process. 

It all seems too simple. Everything flows too simply, and Sehun can feel every single bit of it, and he’s not used to feeling so much all the time. He used to be, before college, Sehun used to feel things so intensely that it hurt, which is a part of the reason why he completely shut Zitao out. 

That’s back now, and it aches even more. This is what he wanted, when he came back home, but he’s not sure he really likes it. 

It feels like nothing has changed with Zitao and him, but Sehun knows a lot has. Zitao’s changed. Not a lot, but he has. He still talks the same way, but there’s a delicacy with which he approaches Sehun now. There’s too many stifled emotions and secret glances that Sehun doesn’t deserve to steal. 

_ “No secrets between us, right? You’ll tell me everything you need to?”  _

_ “No secrets.” _

Sehun sighs. Fifteen minutes till Zitao gets here. He should really get changed. 

He forces himself to stand. The music seeps out of the periphery of his thoughts and brings itself to the forefront.

_ “I don’t need the world to see,”  _ his bluetooth speaker warbles out. Sehun feels the urge to dance. 

So he does. 

_ “That I’ve been the best I can be.” _

The carpet of his room is soft under his bare feet, and Sehun lazily stretches out his arms, eyes closing so that he doesn’t have to look at the bare wall right above his bed, the one where he used to have polaroids of him and Zitao. 

_ “But I don’t think I could stand to be,”  _ as Sehun stumbles slightly. He’s not danced in a while now. He forgot how much he missed it. 

Sehun stops then, eyes opening, focusing on that damned suitcase. 

_ “Where you don’t see me.” _

Skinny jeans and a button down sounds fine.

\---

Sometimes, Sehun wonders if he should’ve majored in political science. He’s not that much of a dick and he thinks corruption is bad, so the bar has already been crossed a million times for him to become a politician. Maybe then he could introduce a law preventing Huang Zitao from having a motorcycle. 

“Sehun, meet Baby. She’s my, uh, baby.” 

_ Don’t get jealous of a beat up Honda motorcycle,  _ Sehun tells himself, like all reasonable people have to from time to time. 

The motorcycle is beautiful though, in a retro, messy aesthetic kinda way. Sehun reaches out to gently touch the fuel tank. The metal is hot. 

Sehun turns to look at Zitao, only to find him staring at Sehun’s fingers intently. Sehun lets them drop from the motorcycle, and Zitao starts. 

“Of course you named your motorcycle,” Sehun says, ignoring the way his heart still hasn’t slowed down from its frankly unhealthy speed caused by Zitao taking off his helmet and smiling at Sehun when he’d walked out of his house. 

Zitao pouts. 

“You don’t like it?” 

Sehun stares at Zitao and wonders if punching him in the face would even do anything. 

“No,” Sehun sighs. “No, it suits her.” 

Zitao’s pout melts into a bright smile, the kind Sehun always loved seeing on his face. 

“You look ridiculous,” he says instead. Zitao keeps smiling. “I’m hungry, can we leave now?” 

Zitao reaches over to the other side of the motorcycle, and unhooks something. He shoves it into Sehun’s hands.

“Helmet,” he explains. “Road safety isn’t a joke.”

“This will ruin my hair.” 

“I’ll stand with my phone open on selfie mode so that you can look at yourself and fix it, but you need to wear it.”

Sehun huffs.

“Fine.”

Sehun clicks the strap in place as Zitao climbs on, and Sehun watches awkwardly as he puts his own helmet on. 

“You can get on,” Zitao says. “Just be careful, the silencer is hot.” 

Sehun gingerly climbs on, carefully perching behind Zitao. He realises he doesn’t know what to do with his hands. 

Zitao starts the motorcycle, and then pauses. 

“You might wanna grab on, I don’t usually tend to go slow.” 

Sehun gulps, and wraps his arms around Zitao. Any attempts to calm the hammering in his chest would be futile, but Sehun doesn’t have time to dwell on that, because Zitao revs the bike once before they’re hurtling down the driveway at very dangerous and stupidly illegal speeds. 

He pitches forward, breath knocked out of his lungs. He squeezes closer to Zitao, and lets his head drop into Zitao’s shoulder, helmets bumping slightly. They’re going so fast, and the wind has a slight chill to it, and Sehun can barely breathe. 

He forces himself to take a shuddery breath, and Zitao still uses the same fabric softener apparently, because even through the helmet, his denim jacket smells exactly like his clothes always have. Sehun takes a second to breathe a little deeper, before he looks back up.

They’re going too fast, and Impasta isn’t even that far away. It’s insane, and definitely illegal.

Sehun laughs. 

He yells, and even without forming intelligible words, there’s enough glee in his voice to make another season of the show. 

Zitao goes faster.

\---

Sehun expects to walk into Impasta and be greeted by familiar red tables that are always slightly sticky, and the warm homey atmosphere that the smell of garlic usually brings. Instead, he’s greeted with minimalist decor and the smell of lavender. 

He wrinkles his nose.

“Where  _ are  _ we?” 

The sign outside did  _ say  _ Impasta, but this looks nothing like it. There’s a weird feeling in Sehun’s stomach. 

“They renovated,” Zitao says. “I came here with Chanyeol and my parents a week ago. The food still tastes the same.”

“I don’t know how to feel about it,” Sehun says, as they awkwardly shuffle over to a table. “I think I liked it better when it first opened.” 

“So did I.”

Sehun sits down on the sofa, and slides in, expecting Zitao to sit next to him, but he takes the seat on the other side of the table instead. 

“I want to see your face,” Zitao explains when Sehun gives him a confused look. “It’s easier like this.”

“Oh.” 

Two menu cards are placed in front of them, and Sehun raises his eyebrows. He has never needed a menu card at Impasta.

“We’re ready to order,” Sehun announces to the person who set down the cards. Sehun doesn’t recognize him. He waits for him to take out a notepad.

“We’ll have a Margherita. Medium sized, please, and two Cokes.” 

Sehun smiles at the waiter as he walks away, but it instantly slips off his face the second it’s just him and Zitao again. He opens his mouth to say something, but he catches Zitao’s amused look, and tilts his head questioningly. 

“Nothing,” Zitao laughs. “You were just so sure about the order. It was cute.” 

Sehun colors. It occurs to him that he’d just sort of assumed that Zitao and him would share the pizza, because that’s what they’ve always done. 

“Did you want something else-”

“No, no, don’t freak out, it was perfectly fine. I ate the same stuff last time I was here.” 

Sehun nods quietly, and his ears train in on the easy listening jazz music in the background. He wrinkles his nose. 

“They made it  _ fancy _ ,” Sehun hisses. 

“I know,” Zitao says, nodding solemnly. “I forgot until we walked in again. It’s like they made an Impasta for old people.” 

“It’s an imposter Impasta. The Impasta  _ I  _ know would never have waitstaff. It wouldn’t even have this stupid music in the background. Or these stupid tables.” 

“I think it’s to attract more of the middle class crowd from other towns. I’ve seen so many people drive all the way here to get food here.” 

Sehun thinks about it, and sighs. 

“I mean, I guess that’s good for Impasta but…” 

“But?” 

“I don’t like it.” 

“Does this technically count as gentrification?”, Zitao asks. “I had a class on that last year.”

Sehun realises he doesn’t even know Zitao’s major.

“What were you even taking that discussed that?”

Zitao always wanted to take music. Sehun still remembers when his mom had to drive Zitao to his AP Music Theory exam, but he doesn’t suppose they discuss gentrification along with the circle of fifths. 

“Anthropology in Business,” Zitao explains. “It was one of the better courses.”

“Business?”, Sehun asks, and maybe it comes out a little too loud. “You did Business?”

“Yeah.” Zitao’s tone is weird. “Hated every second of it. I ended up taking Music Theory as a minor instead of a major.”

“Why?”, Sehun asks, and he winces immediately after. He shouldn’t have asked it like that.

“Oh, you know how parents are. Same old argument.”

Zitao’s tone is dismissive, so Sehun doesn’t press further. But he’s right, Sehun does understand how parents can be. He didn’t want to take journalism. 

The thought of Zitao in a stuffy office somewhere just doesn’t sit right with him, though. It’s just not who Zitao is. Sehun sighs, hands fidgeting as he thinks of Zitao in a bespoke suit. 

He coughs. 

“You haven’t- you haven’t stopped music though, right?”, Sehun asks, slightly nervous. 

Zitao smiles. 

“How could I? I don’t think I could give up music even if I wanted to. Besides,” and he winks at Sehun. “I know how much you like my stuff. I could never stop making it.”

Sehun suddenly thinks about the CD Zitao had burned for him when they were 13, and he wonders if it’s still tucked away in his sock drawer. Zitao coughs. 

“Anyways,” he says, fingers drumming on the table. “I don’t think middle class minimalistic hell Impasta is the worst thing in the world, but I think that’s just because their pizza tastes just as good as it used to.” 

Sehun hums. 

“I’ll believe that when I get to eat some.” 

\---

Once the food arrives, they talk about things that don’t matter, because talking about things that do is too heavy and Sehun can only handle almost crying once in a day. 

Zitao, it turns out, was right about the food. Impasta still tastes like Impasta, and Sehun’s glad, because there’s only so much he has to cling to of what he’s always known and he doesn’t  _ like  _ change.

But things have changed, as Sehun has noted already, and it becomes even more glaringly obvious the more they talk. Zitao is more deliberate now, talks more slowly than he used to when they were younger. He folds his napkin when he’s done with his food, instead of messily dumping it to the side. He doesn’t “accidentally” kick Sehun under the table, and he doesn’t blow bubbles in his drinks just because he can. 

Zitao has grown up. Sehun has too. 

Some things just don’t change though, and Zitao smiles the same way and his eyes do the same shimmery thing when they catch the light and he laughs exactly like Sehun remembers and it fucking  _ hurts  _ the exact same way. 

Sehun wonders, as Zitao launches into a story about the time he sneaked a live duck into his college’s library, if he remembers the exact moment where Zitao’s smile had gone from something that made Sehun feel so safe to something that made Sehun want to cry because of how much he wanted to keep it there. He probably doesn’t. 

(He does, he definitely does, he remembers the sinking in his stomach and the  _ oh  _ that echoed through his mind, blocking out everything else, as Zitao had smiled at him while he had food on his upper lip. Sehun remembers every second of it, but he pretends he doesn’t for the sake of staying sane.)

Would things be different if he wasn’t so much of a coward? Sehun doesn’t know. He can’t allow himself to begin to think about what  _ would  _ have happened if he ever did something about his stupid longing and his stupid heart instead of running away from his best friend and screaming about it to no one but himself. Can’t allow himself to consider a possibility where he never stops talking to Zitao and eventually wakes up to his smile everyday and loves him and gets loved back in the  _ same fucking way  _ because that is all Sehun has ever wanted and to think that he could’ve had it is nothing short of torture. 

Zitao asks if he wants ice cream when they get up to leave and if they were 16, Sehun would say yes and ask him to get extra chocolate sauce but right now his bones hurt and his heart hurts more because Zitao still makes him laugh till he can’t breathe so he shakes his head and fakes a yawn. 

“I’m tired,” he says, and in a moment of weakness he leans his head against Zitao’s shoulder and lets Zitao hold his waist as they move to the motorcycle. Zitao hums and the moment of weakness continues as Sehun lets Zitao support the entirety of his weight as he drives him home.

Sehun half considers pretending to be asleep when the motorcycle stops in his driveway, but then Zitao says his name gently, and Sehun sits up. 

“Hun-ah? Sehun?” 

They’re at the door of his house and Sehun snaps out the trance/reverie/weird heartache induced sleepiness he’s been trapped in and finally looks at Zitao, who looks like he’s been trying to get his attention for a while. Zitao smiles. 

“Hey.” 

“Hi,” Sehun mumbles, barely registering anything at this point. 

“You must be really sleepy, huh?”, Zitao laughs. “Go, rest. I probably pulled you around too much today.”

“Tomorrow?”, Sehun asks, and goddamnit the question is too vague, but this is Zitao, so he understands. 

“I’ll text you,” Zitao promises. They’d exchanged numbers at Impasta, because landlines are relics of the past and should  _ stay  _ there. 

They look at each other for a second and Zitao’s about to say something, but he doesn’t. 

“Bye,” Sehun whispers. “Get back home in one piece.” 

“Cross my heart.”

Sehun unlocks the door with the keys his parents gave him, and waves at Zitao, even though he’s only a few inches away. 

Zitao waves back. 

\---

“So,” Sehun coughs over breakfast with his parents. “About college.” 

“Give me a second, Sehunnie, the eggs are burning,” replies Sehun’s father. His mother is busy gently patting the coffee machine to try to make it spit out something which vaguely resembles caffeine. 

Sehun looks at them, at his parents who work so hard and have had the same coffee machine and fridge and stove for as long as he can remember, looks at his father struggling with eggs while he chews on the Cocoa Pebbles his mother probably drove an hour to get, and he decides that maybe he won’t tell them today. 

“Forget about it,” he mumbles. “It’s not important.”

\---

“You know,” Sehun says as he throws a grape at Zitao. “I forgot how little there was to do here.” 

They’re sitting on a blanket Zitao already had ready by the time Sehun had arrived. All it took was a simple “Come to The Spot for lunch or something?” text, and Sehun had shown up at the clearing by the lake where they used to spend most of their time, to find a picnic set up in the middle of it. 

“Right?”, Zitao says once he’s done chewing his grape. “All I’ve done since I got back is ate and slept and like, vaguely wandered through the town. I sometimes tag along with Chanyeol and Jongin but that gets uncomfortable real fast, so before you came back I was just… doing nothing.” 

“I’m here now,” Sehun mumbles. “We can just get bored together.” 

“Sounds good.” 

The lake ripples lazily as a gust of wind blows across the clearing. It’s starting to get colder. Sehun reaches into the basket by his side, and pulls out a sandwich. 

“Did you make all this food?”, he asks. Zitao’s lying on his side, head propped up by one of his arms. He smiles up at Sehun. 

“I asked Chanyeol to ask Jongin for help with the dessert, but I made the sandwiches.” 

Zitao sounds proud, so Sehun takes a bite wanting to see just how much Zitao’s culinary skills have improved. 

“Zitao, this is Nutella on bread.” 

“I know.”

“And you’re proud that you made it all alone?” 

“Listen, at least I didn’t set anything on fire.” 

Sehun rolls his eyes. 

“You’re hopeless.” 

Zitao doesn’t respond, opting instead to motion for Sehun to throw him another grape. Sehun does, but he’s never been a good thrower, which means that Zitao has to stretch out of the comfortable position he’s been lying in to catch it. He does catch it, though. 

“You’re stupidly good at catching grapes,” Sehun decides. “You even make up for my shitty throwing.” 

“Mm,” Zitao hums. “My two talents: catching grapes with my mouth and making Nutella sandwiches.” 

Sehun laughs. It feels like they’re 16 again, and Sehun never ran away. He lets himself revel in it. 

“Did I tell you about the time my roommate had to heimlich me because I choked on a grape?”, Sehun asks. He shudders internally. Asphyxiation by fruit isn’t fun. 

Zitao snorts, and then dissolves into full blown giggles. He has to sit up, because it seems like he can barely breathe with how much he’s laughing. Sehun turns red. 

“H-how does that even  _ happen?” _ , Zitao asks, once he calms down. “Did you- did you swallow it- whole?” 

Sehun wants to be fake angry at Zitao for laughing at his near death experience but Zitao’s been laughing so hard that tears have collected in the corners of his eyes, so Sehun just sighs and buries his face in his hands. 

“I don’t know, okay? It just happened. One moment I was eating grapes like a normal human being, and the next second one of them had decided it wanted to live in my windpipe forever.” 

Zitao looks like he’s five seconds away from wheezing. 

“Oh Sehun’s Marvelous Adventures with Berries, the Novel,” Zitao manages to say. 

“Are grapes even berries?” 

Zitao pauses. 

“Huh. No idea. Whatever, you know what I mean.” 

Sehun rolls his eyes and tosses a grape at Zitao. 

Zitao catches it. 

\---

Sehun absent-mindedly fiddles with the shopping cart in front of him, trying to place the very familiar instrumental that’s currently playing in the grocery. Zitao comes up behind him, dunking a pack of instant noodles into the cart and gently taking the trolley from him. 

“I, uh, have to go to the grocery store,” Zitao had said. “Come along?” 

And because Sehun has nothing to do in this town, he’d agreed. He’s quite certain that even if he had had something to do, he’d have postponed it. 

Sehun reaches out to inspect one of the bottles of sauce in the aisle they’re passing by. He almost drops it when he realises it’s sticky. 

“I think this bottle is expired,” he says. “Wow, when was the last time they stocked this place?” 

Zitao retrieves the bottle from his hands and gingerly places it back on the shelf. 

Sehun wipes his hands on Zitao’s shirt. Zitao winces. 

“Thanks Hun-ah. Love being best friends with a literal demon.” 

Sehun laughs. 

“Stop being dramatic.” 

“The shirt was a gift from my mom”, Zitao murmurs as they turn the corner of the aisle, moving into the bread section. 

Sehun tries to say something, but no words come out as he stares down the long stretch of various bread items, and it’s like he’s been hit over the head with memories of Zitao pushing him down the same aisle in a shopping cart that barely supported him. 

Zitao stops when he does, looking at him curiously. 

“What’s up?” 

“I just- remember when you tried to see how far you could push me in this cart?” 

“Oh,” Zitao says, and Sehun can hear the smile in his voice without turning to look at him. “Pushed you pretty far, didn’t I?” 

“You pushed me into the wall,” Sehun says, trying not to laugh as he remembers Zitao’s excited whoop turning into profuse apologies. “The cart hit the wall so hard that all the soda in the next aisle fell over.” 

Zitao winces. 

“I probably shouldn’t have let go of the cart.” 

Sehun searches for something to say amidst the silent nostalgia that has creeped up on him. It seems that spending time with Zitao is like trying to dance in a field of landmines. Every once in a while, Sehun toes at a landmine and gets thrown into a state of melancholy that shitty rom-coms could only dream of conveying. 

Zitao finds something instead, though. 

“Hey,” he says, sounding a little unsure. “Wanna try again?” 

“What?” 

“Here,” Zitao says, reaching in to move some of the stuff in the cart around. “You’ll fit, just don’t accidentally sit on the eggs.” 

Sehun gives him a look, but then he asks himself exactly what’s stopping him from getting in the cart. 

It takes a bit of maneuvering for him to be able to fit into it; over time, Sehun’s limbs have become even longer, and it’s hard to control them. 

“Won’t let go this time, promise,” Zitao says, once Sehun is comfortably seated. 

“You’re an idiot,” Sehun says. 

“Ready?” 

“I can’t believe you’re serious about this.” 

And then Zitao’s running down the aisle, pushing Sehun as fast as he can. Sehun hangs on to the sides of the cart and he  _ laughs  _ and it feels amazing because these past few years it felt like he’d forgotten how to do that but since he’s been back he’s been laughing so much. There’s no space for the quiet ache that plagues Sehun’s ribcage, not when Zitao is pushing him down the bread aisle full speed. 

(Maybe they still crash into the wall, this time with Zitao bearing the brunt of the force instead of soda, but Sehun thinks that’s okay.) 

\--- 

Sehun wakes up to a text from Zitao telling him that they can’t meet today, and Zitao’s terribly sorry and at least a billion sad face emojis, so needless to say, he’s not feeling great. He shoots Zitao a “don’t worry about it, it’s okay”, and then realises he has nothing to do today. He’s been back for what, 3 days, and he already has nothing to do without Zitao. Sehun wonders what he’ll do over here if he actually goes through with what he has planned for college. 

His parents have already left, a sticky note on the table informing Sehun that they’ll be back a little late, and he should either make lunch from the stuff they have in the fridge or go out. 

It’s then as he sits on the couch and eats his Cocoa Pebbles that he considers, for the first time, that maybe he’s been running from an emptiness that’s been inside him all along.

\--- 

Somehow at lunch time, Sehun finds himself sitting in Blue Diner, at the usual table, with a plate of pancakes in front of him. He takes a bite, and they’re as good as always, but sitting in front of the jukebox isn’t the same when Zitao isn’t near him. It’s as he lets his fork drop that Jongin slides in the seat near him.

“Hey,” Jongin says as Sehun blinks at him. “I’m on lunch break right now, so I thought we could catch up.” 

“Oh, uh, hi!”, Sehun says, unsure of how to respond. “You sure you wanna spend your lunch break with me?” 

Jongin laughs.

“Of course I do. We haven’t met since you left for college. Besides, it looks like Zitao abandoned you today.” 

“He didn’t abandon me,” Sehun says instantly. 

“Of course he didn’t,” Jongin smiles. “It must be something important if he’s passing up the chance to hang out with  _ you _ .” 

The implications of that make Sehun stutter a bit. He needs to change the topic before he explodes. 

“You and Chanyeol are dating now?”, is what he comes up with, because of fucking course that’s all he can produce. 

Jongin’s face immediately bursts into a soft smile. 

“Uh-huh,” he says, and Sehun marvels at how  _ soft  _ he sounds. He wonders if that’s how he sounds when he’s talking about Zitao. He hopes not, it’d probably make him sound like an idiot. “We’ve been dating for what, a year now?” 

“How did it happen?”, Sehun asks. 

“His brother’s fault, actually. I asked for Zitao’s number so I could set him up a tab because he eats here so often when he’s in town, and he gave me Chanyeol’s instead. Pretty sure he did it on purpose, if I’m being honest. Anyways, I texted him to ask if I’ve got the right number, found out I hadn’t, and then Chanyeol and I just started texting, and it sort of went on from that.” 

“Oh my god, did he do that thing where he uses all those tiny little kaomoji thingies?”, Sehun asks, laughing slightly. Chanyeol, from what he remembers, is big and goofy, not unlike his brother, even though his attitude towards Sehun had become colder over the past few years. 

“Holy shit, yeah, all the time, he still uses them. There were so many, and I had no idea where he was getting them from.” 

Sehun laughs. 

“Zitao does that too, guess he got that from his brother.” 

Jongin grins, before looking at Sehun seriously. 

“You like him, don’t you?” 

Sehun chokes on his pancake. 

“Wh-” 

“Zitao. Come on, Sehun, it’s been so obvious since forever. We used to have a betting pool in high school about which one of you would ask the other out first.” 

Sehun kinda wants to fly into the sun, but he doubts that the laws of physics would allow that, so he stays planted in his seat, staring at Jongin. 

Jongin wrinkles his nose as he continues. 

“I lost all my allowance. I’d bet on Zitao, but Kim Jongdae- remember him?- yeah, he ended up winning.” 

He’s reeling, but having a breakdown in front of Jongin doesn’t seem like the best idea. 

“He bet we’d never get together?” 

“Not exactly,” Jongin says. “He’d bet that you’d realise your feelings and get spooked and Zitao would let you go because- in his words- “that’s what Zitao does, he  _ lets _ Sehun.”  _ I  _ personally think that Kim Jongdae was a witch but that’s another conversation.” 

“That’s-”, Sehun starts, a look of confusion and the general aura of an existential crisis on his face. “Strangely detailed. And surprisingly accurate.” 

“Uh-huh. Telling you. A witch.” 

Sehun sighs, burying his face in his hands. 

“Is it that obvious?” 

Jongin shifts, putting a hand on Sehun’s forearm. 

“Listen, I’m trying to be gentle with you, but honestly I’m pretty sure everyone knew before you and Zitao did.” 

“Oh my god,” Sehun whispers out. Talking about his feelings is not something he really wants to do, but right now he doesn’t see any other option. 

“Sehun,” Jongin says, and Sehun wants to disappear. “Listen, I know it’s not my place, but I’d like to think that we’re still friends, and you can’t keep holding all this inside you forever. I honestly don’t know how you’ve survived for so long like this. And I’m not saying that it’s me you have to talk to, but you need to talk to  _ someone _ , and I need you to know that I’m there-”

“It’s been  _ years _ ,” Sehun interrupts. “I thought if I pushed myself away and stopped talking to him, just pretended that nothing ever happened, that it would all go away. That I wouldn’t have to deal with all these stupid fucking  _ feelings _ , but it’s been six years and I took one look at him and my heart said not in this lifetime you fucking dumbass.” 

Jongin immediately falls silent, gives Sehun a look that means “go on”. Sehun tries to settle himself. 

“And it’s so frustrating and I hate it because I spent so long hurting him by ignoring him the way I did, and he  _ still _ smiles at me the same way. I’m a shitty best friend and he deserves more but I can’t even spend a fucking afternoon with him without having at least one moment of the most soul crushing nostalgia ever. It hurts so much because he makes me so happy but I don’t have time to ever think about that, not when I’m trying to find where the fuck my lungs went.” 

“I’m too quiet but I also talk too much but he’s still there. Why is he still  _ there?  _ Why is he still showing up at my house with flowers and planning picnics? Why is he insisting on spending every single waking moment he can with me? Because honestly, most of the time,  _ I _ don’t want to spend time with me, and here he is trying so  _ hard _ , because I ran away from him like a fucking  _ coward. _ ” 

“Sehun,” Jongin interrupts for the first time. “Maybe consider that-” 

“ _ No _ ,” and it comes out so loud that even Sehun flinches. “I don’t think I could consider him feeling the same way without going absolutely insane. I’ve fucked everything up already, and I don’t want to- to take a gamble like that, because I don’t think my heart can survive getting broken. It either works out, or I never tell him and learn to move on, there’s no other option. The steps to it working out are too risky but moving on is so hard, because I’ve been trying for so long, and it’s just not working, it just  _ isn’t _ .”

“I don’t know,” Sehun sighs out. “I’m sorry, I’m just yelling at you for no reason, and-” 

Jongin raises his eyebrow at him. 

“-Thank you,” Sehun says. “For listening. I just-”

“Feeling better?”, Jongin asks simply. 

Sehun takes a moment, and realises that he does, in fact, feel better. 

“Yeah,” he says, quietly, staring at his pancakes. “Yeah, I kinda am.” 

\---

Sehun wakes up the next morning feeling like a freight train has run him over, and he barely has the energy to open his eyes. He wonders why exactly he’s woken up, before the ring of the doorbell registers in his ears, a few seconds late to process. It’s one of those days, one of the days where everything is so much harder than it should be, and getting out of bed seems impossible. 

Sehun’s left arm quivers slightly as he forces himself to push the blankets off and climb out of bed. 

“Quit it,” he mumbles, absent-mindedly smacking his arm. It hurts to speak, his throat feels too dry and scratchy, but the thought of drinking water seems so far away.

He somehow makes his way to the door, and then wills his posture to straighten, making his face as blank as possible. This is the easiest expression to maintain on days like these, and he’s hoping it’s just a delivery or something, a quick five minute deal. 

Sehun opens the door to find Zitao smiling straight at him. 

He’s too drained though, to worry about how his hair is sticking up and that he hasn’t showered and he’s still in those same pajamas that Zitao’s already seen him in, but that doesn’t stop the thoughts from cramming in the back of his head. They’re so  _ loud _ , and Sehun struggles to remember what he’s supposed to be doing. 

“Zitao?”, he asks, and then it hits him. They’d made plans to drive down to the next town over and grab bubble tea. “Oh, oh my god, I’m so sorry, I totally forgot we made plans-” 

“Are you okay?” 

Zitao gets straight to the point as always, which isn’t necessarily a good thing, because Sehun is left without an answer to that. What does he say?  _ Absolutely peachy, thanks. _ That’s a straight up lie.  _ Feel like hell warmed over. _ More accurate, but Sehun doesn’t want to worry Zitao. 

There’s a socially acceptable time that is allowed to elapse between dialogue in a conversation, and Sehun’s brain picks up on the fact that said time has elapsed, and he needs to respond  _ now _ , but he doesn’t have a response ready, so he ends up mumbling something akin to “Feel like peaches, thanks.”

Zitao blinks, and then gently steps into the house, hand covering Sehun’s on the door. Sehun realises he’s been clutching the door so tightly that his knuckles have turned white, and while he knows that he  _ should _ unclench his hand, but he can’t bring himself to do it. It’s okay, though, because Zitao softly pries his hand off the door. 

“What’s wrong?”, Zitao asks, and his voice is thankfully quiet. 

“I’m-”

Sehun has the rehearsed excuse ready, the “I’m fine, just didn’t really sleep well last night”, and he’s more than willing to put on the mask and force himself to  _ move  _ dammit, but Zitao’s face is so concerned and caring and  _ open _ that Sehun lets himself break, and he knows then that he’ll not be going anywhere today.

“I’m tired,” he whispers. “I’m so tired.” 

Sehun lets go of his posture, lets his shoulders slump the way they never do, and everything fucking  _ sucks _ so hard. He almost pitches forward, straight into Zitao because of how suddenly he’s let go and given up the pretense. Maybe Zitao is surprised and looks at his face worriedly, maybe he asks him what’s wrong again, but Sehun wouldn’t know. His mind is so cloudy that he barely even registers Zitao leading him to the couch. 

“Wait here,” Zitao whispers. “I’ll be back in a second, promise.” 

Sehun feels a soft pressure on the top of his head, but he can’t focus on anything. It’s usually not this bad, but it seems like everything that’s been happening recently was just too much for Sehun. 

Sehun’s mind is filled with thoughts, loud, angry thoughts that demand his attention, that scream at him to look at them and deal with them, but he is seated in a room separated from them by a plexiglass wall, so all he can do is stare listlessly as they pound at the plexiglass. He doesn’t know whether he wants it to break or not. 

They scream so many things ( _ Your parents put their life on hold to send you to college. Zitao’s in your house. Where did that spider in the living room go? You disgust me. Coward.),  _ but mostly they just yell his name, clamouring for attention, for Sehun to look at them through the plexiglass wall and hear their distorted little voices. 

_ SEHUN, Sehun, Sehun?, Sehun. _

Again, and again, and again. 

_ Sehu- _

“Hun-ah?” 

The voice isn’t angry, and it’s right next to him, no plexiglass. Sehun takes a shuddery breath. 

“Hi,” he whispers to Zitao, who’s standing in front of him. Zitao smiles, his stupid sunshiny smile, and Sehun attempts a smile back, on instinct. 

Zitao pulls him up from the couch, and keeps a hand wrapped around Sehun’s wrist. Not in a way that makes Sehun feel invalid, but just a general gesture of concern. 

“Close your eyes,” he tells Sehun. 

“What?” 

“Ah, just trust me. Close your eyes.” 

Sehun does. 

Zitao leads him gently through his own house, and Sehun stumbles behind him blindly. 

“Here,” Zitao says, once they’re in what Sehun assumes is his room, based on the direction they’ve walked in. “You can open your eyes.” 

When the world shifts back into focus (the most focus it can be in with your own mind screaming at you), Sehun stares with his mouth open at his bed. Zitao’s managed to turn his bed into a giant pillow fort, with bedsheets covering it from outside view and a tiny slit revealing all of Sehun’s most comfortable pillows stacked on it. 

All Sehun can manage is a simple squeeze of Zitao’s hand.  _ Thank you. _

“Wait,” Zitao says. “Before you go in there and crash, drink up.” 

Sehun stares at the glass of water he’s being handed. He considers refusing, but he knows Zitao won’t take no for an answer when it comes to water. He gingerly grabs it, trying his best not to spill any, as he gulps it down. 

When he’s done, Zitao smiles at him. 

“Okay,” he says. “Go take a nap now.” 

“But I just woke up-” 

“Hun-ah.” 

Sehun doesn’t have the energy to argue right now, so he goes and settles himself into the pillow fort, trying not to mess anything up. The sun sort of filters in through the blankets, but in a way that’s gentle and forgiving. He positions his head so he can peek through the slight slit, and Zitao crouches so that he can look back at him. 

“Is it comfortable?”, he asks. 

“Very,” Sehun says, softly. 

There’s a soft bout of silence as Zitao smiles in accomplishment, but then Sehun breaks it.

“Come inside.” 

He has no idea why he said that, and he’d panic, but the pillow fort is warm and frankly, he couldn’t be bothered. 

Zitao tilts his head. 

“You think I’d fit?” 

“Please,” Sehun whispers, his filter gone. “I’m sorry. I know it’ll be boring, but you have your phone and I just- Please.” 

Sehun watches Zitao’s expression soften even more. Sehun wonders if touching his face would be a bad idea. Maybe it’d shut all those thoughts up. 

“Okay,” Zitao says simply. 

He lifts the sheet a bit and manages to maneuver himself inside without disturbing Sehun. He sits cross-legged, and Sehun wants to warn him that his feet will fall asleep, but he just hums contently instead.

“Thank you for this.” 

Zitao doesn’t reply, and the pillow fort is warm, and the closer Zitao and his breathing is, the quieter the thoughts are, so Sehun’s eyes are already closing. 

It’s why he’s already asleep by the time Zitao mumbles.

“Anything if it’s for you.”

\---

Sehun wakes up to his room bathed pink and orange, and his head in Zitao’s lap. Zitao’s staring ahead, headphones in his ears, and the bed sheets that covered their little pillow fort have fallen from where they were draped. 

He stiffens as he remembers the morning, because Zitao shouldn’t have had to see him like that. Zitao seems to notice the spasm, looking down at him, fingers scrabbling to remove his earphones. 

“Hey there,” he says softly. “How are you?”

Sehun should probably sit up, but everything seems so peaceful right now, and he doesn’t want to disturb it. 

“Better,” he whispers. “I’m sorry you had to deal with that.” 

“Shh,” Zitao says, hand coming to stroke Sehun’s hair out of his face. “Don’t apologise to me.”

His hand in Sehun’s hair is so distracting, and Sehun fights the urge to lean into it. 

“But if you want to talk about it,” Zitao continues, “I’m here to listen. And if you don’t, I’m here to sit here in silence with you too.” 

“You’re so good to me,” Sehun whispers, and he must still be groggy, because this is dangerous territory and he’d never go here normally. “How are you so good to me?” 

“All I do is care about you, Hun-ah. That’s all. Everyone should be good to you.” 

Zitao’s hand is still in his hair, and Sehun watches in silence as the setting sun hits Zitao’s skin just right through his room’s tiny window. They sit like that, Zitao occasionally looking at Sehun to smile at him, in silence for a while, until Sehun speaks. 

“This… it happens sometimes. I’ll wake up and everything will be so overwhelmingly  _ hard _ and I can barely do anything. They aren’t very, uh, frequent, anymore. My first year at college, when it started, it sucked so bad. I missed so many classes because I simply couldn’t get myself to stand up.” 

Zitao hums, the slight dusting of concern on his face the only indication that Sehun is currently baring his soul to him. Sehun appreciates it. He hates the overt concern people show when stuff like this is brought up. 

“But it’s better now?”, he asks, in a casual tone, the kind you use to inquire whether there is cream cheese in the fridge, but there is an underlying softness, as if you are wondering about the nature of the cream cheese’s soul. 

“It is. I- uh, I did therapy for a while? That helped.” 

Sehun says it carefully. It’s the first time he’s told anyone. He doesn’t know why; he’s not exactly ashamed of it, but therapy was something so deeply personal, that it never felt right to tell anyone. 

“Oh,” Zitao says, but gently. “Was it- Was it hard?” 

“Therapy?”, Sehun asks. “I mean. Yes? No? I don’t know. It helped me figure stuff out. Got rid of a lot of the heaviness and the worst of the bad days. But…” 

Sehun takes a deep breath.

“You know, there were always days where I’d wake up and I’d not want to go for my appointment. I’d try and make an excuse or something, and it felt  _ horrible _ , because I just kept asking myself why I didn’t want to get better. But the thing is, it wasn’t that I didn’t want to get better. It’s just that it was really, really hard. Every session would just be so much work, and sometimes when we’d finish, I just felt… empty. Like someone took the soul out of me.” 

Zitao strokes his hair. 

“And it was  _ hard.  _ It still is. I mean, there are so many more good days than there are bad days now, but it’s still so  _ hard _ . I just- when does it get easy?” 

It occurs to Sehun that maybe he shouldn’t be dumping all this on Zitao, but then he thinks of how good Zitao is to him, and he decides that the least he can offer in return is openness. 

“I’m sorry,” Zitao says, and he’s speaking slowly for once, the way he does only when he’s being serious. “I’m sorry it’s so hard, Hun-ah.” 

Sehun looks away from the point on the wall where his eyes have been fixed to look up at where Zitao is staring at him, gentleness splayed across his face. 

“I’m useless with words,” Zitao continues, “but I’m sorry it’s so hard. I don’t know when it’ll get easy but I just- You’re so amazing, you know that?” 

Zitao doesn’t say it the way motivational speakers do, the way that means “you’re amazing and so you should be happy”, the way that is well intentioned but doesn’t do shit. No, Zitao has genuine awe and adoration in his eyes and Sehun  _ loves  _ him. 

He has always been hesitant of using the word love because it means so much and also nothing at all, but Sehun  _ loves  _ Zitao and at this point, he doesn’t even care that it’s in too many ways to count. 

He can’t bring himself to say it though, even though they used to tell each other that all the time. Instead he settles for blurting out the second biggest secret Sehun has attempted to keep from the universe.

“I’m not going back to college.”

Sehun flinches as he says it, because he’s sitting in the same house his parents almost mortgaged to pay for him to get to college. Zitao looks at him curiously. 

“Why?”, he asks, but there’s no judgement, nothing that indicates anything other than concern. 

Sehun goes back to staring at his patch of wall. 

“It… remember that numbness I talked about? The one that hit me right after therapy sessions sometimes? That started when I started college, and it wasn’t just therapy. It was all the time. Just this emptiness, no feelings at all. Going through the motions. And that’s so tiring, to just constantly feel nothing.” 

Sehun sighs.

“Plus, it’s not even like I’m good at it either. I thought literature would interest me but it makes something I love so… mechanical. Every other day I would skip class, and then I’d spent four hours wallowing in guilt about how much money I’d just wasted. It just… it wasn’t good.”

He attempts a laugh, but his voice cracks a bit. 

“But now I’m just sitting here wondering if it’s a good idea,” Sehun continues, and there’s the little voice in his head telling him to shut up, Zitao doesn’t care, but he powers through. “Because I came back here so that it would stop, because I feel so much when I’m home, and the first few days were just that, just so many  _ feelings _ , but now I’m not so sure, because I woke up so tired. What if it wasn’t even college? What if it’s just me?”

Zitao breaks the rhythm of how he’s been stroking Sehun’s hair, and lets his hand find Sehun’s face. He tilts Sehun so that he’s looking at him, cupping his cheek. 

“There’s so much I want to say to you,” Zitao whispers. “I’m not sure where to start. I’m not sure  _ how _ to start.” 

“The beginning is a good place,” Sehun says, trying to smile. Surprisingly, it works. 

“Hun-ah,” Zitao says, and he sounds  _ breathless _ , like Sehun has stolen all the air in the room. “You’re so brave.” 

And Sehun wants to  _ laugh _ , because he has spent years calling himself a coward for so many things, one of the biggest being Zitao himself. He wants to laugh and then he wants to cry, but worst of all, he wants Zitao to hold him through it, to hold him and tell him it’ll be okay.

There’s a lump in his throat. 

“You’re so brave”, Zitao says again. “I’m sorry the universe is so cruel to you, and I’m sorry things haven’t worked out like you’ve wanted them to, but…” 

“But even though you deserve so much more, I don’t think there’s anything I can do to give it to you, except be there for you, and tell you how brave and strong you are.” 

“I’m not strong,” Sehun mumbles, shaking his head. “There’s no strength in emptiness.”    
  


“There’s strength in reaching out,” Zitao shoots back. “There’s strength in talking about it, and fighting it everyday. There’s strength in making decisions.” 

“Zitao, I’m not even- I don’t even know if what I’m doing is the right thing.” 

“I don’t think anyone does, Hun-ah.” 

Sehun takes a deep breath. 

“Everything is so chaotic all the time, and I keep causing more of that wherever I go, and I just…” 

“You’d be surprised how much we need chaos,” Zitao says. 

Sehun looks at him questioningly. 

“See, when I took music theory as my minor, they made me take an introductory physics course as well. I was shit at it, let me put that out there, there were too many formulae and derivations and weird greek letters. But there was this one thing that we learnt that kind of stuck with me.” 

Sehun listens. It’s not everyday you learn life lessons via physics while your head is in your best friends lap. 

“There’s these laws of thermodynamics, right? And we use them for stupid complicated things that have  _ nothing _ to do with music, but the second law of thermodynamics out of context is something so lovely I kinda have it memorised.”

Zitao looks up for a second, as if trying to remember something. 

“So it says, ‘In a natural thermodynamic process in a closed isolated system, the sum of the entropies of the participating systems always increases.’ And if I’m being completely honest, I still don’t know what half of those things mean, but our professor, she tried to explain it to us in terms of the universe.”

“She said, ‘If we consider the universe a closed isolated system, then interactions between every single atom in the universe are the direct result of the second law of thermodynamics.’ Obviously, I was like what the fuck does that mean. But basically, it turns out that us, as entities, are nothing but the universe’s way of increasing its state of maximum entropy.” 

“What’s entropy?”, Sehun asks, quietly, transfixed. 

“It’s like a measure of disorder. Chaos.” 

Sehun feels warm. 

“We were made for,” Zitao says, slowly, deliberately, “and we will always continue to create chaos.” 

It’s better than feeling numb.

\---

“Did I tell you about that florist I worked for?”, Sehun asks, as he sits cross legged on the rock in the woods. Zitao, as always, is rustling around in the bushes for some reason or another. He could never sit still. 

“No, you did not. And now that I’ve heard about this, I demand at least one stupid story.”

Sehun laughs. 

“I used to work Saturdays in this little flower shop, ya know, so that I could buy food and stuff, and I’m pretty sure the old lady I worked for was either a demon or a vampire or both.” 

Zitao snorts. 

“Really? Why’s that? She didn’t pinch your cheeks and give you candy like most old ladies do?” 

Sehun sighs. 

“No,” he says, shaking his head. “No, surprisingly, she still did that.” 

“Why do all old ladies love you?”, Zitao huffs. “You give them one look and they’re like oh my god an angel has descended on the Earth.” 

He wrinkles his nose. 

“I mean, they aren’t wrong, but all old ladies think I’m sort of a delinquent, when you’re like ten times more chaotic than I am, so it’s not fair.”

“Stop being jealous just because I’m cuter than you,” Sehun says. “ _ Anyways _ , she hated the sun with a burning passion. And I’m not talking “oh no my poor old skin ahhh” type hate. I’m talking “I almost became an astronaut so that I could fight the sun” type hate.” 

Zitao whistles lowly. Some of the birds in the vicinity titter back almost instantly. 

“And she worked with flowers?”, Zitao asks. “Don’t they need the sun for like, food and stuff?” 

“Yeah, I have no idea why. She’d close all the curtains until someone else came along and then she’d go sit in the backroom and sulk while we allowed to plants to actually photosynthesize.”

“Oh my god,” Sehun continues, suddenly remembering something. “This one time she offered me like a full  _ bag _ of those tiny mango sweets? The ones that don’t ever really taste right? Yeah, she just had an industrial sized bag of them, and she was like “I’ll give them to you if you manage to get one of your friends to apply for work here.” And I was like, wow, okay, hold up, is this a pyramid scheme?” 

Zitao’s laughing now, doubled over near the bush he’s rustling around. 

“A floral pyramid scheme,” he wheezes out, barely able to talk. “Oh my god, your little packages that you pay a million bucks for are like seeds and you have to- you have to sell them-”

Zitao’s laughing too hard to finish his sentence, and now Sehun’s laughing too, and they’re two adults (in theory) laughing on a Friday morning in the middle of the woods about a floral pyramid scheme. 

“Here,” Zitao says, shoulders still shaking from laughter, walking over. “Before I drop them because I laughed too hard.” 

Zitao lets what’s in his hands spill out onto the rock near Sehun. Sehun gasps. 

“Where did you find these in the beginning of  _ winter _ ?” 

They’re wildflowers, little sprigs of colour, and Sehun marvels over just how many of them Zitao has collected. 

“They’re always growing here,” Zitao says, looking up at Sehun. “Do you know how to press flowers?” 

“Uh, not really,” Sehun says, as he picks up a particularly pretty blue flower. 

“My roommate in college, they taught me how to with an iron. It was pretty cool, even though I’ve never exactly wanted to press flowers.” 

“How?”, Sehun asks, gently putting the flower in his hand back down. 

“So you take two sheets of paper and you put the flower between them, and then you take an iron on low heat and just put it over the flower for 15 seconds. Then let it cool for a bit, and repeat till it’s dry. It’s a lot easier than it seems.”

“Huh,” Sehun says. “Can I keep them?”, he asks, looking at Zitao. 

Zitao looks up at him, almost a bit surprised. 

“Of course you can. I got them for you.” 

“You did?” 

Zitao smiles at him, and tilts his head, and Sehun is suddenly back in his room yesterday, looking up at Zitao smile the same way. 

“Anything for your sophomore year flower boy aesthetic, Hun-ah.” 

If Sehun wasn’t holding multiple delicate flowers in his hands, he would smack Zitao  _ so  _ hard. 

“Stop bringing it up!”, he exclaims, only for Zitao to laugh. 

“I’m sorry,” Zitao says, and he’s wheezing again. “I’m just thinking of you in your flower crowns at your floral pyramid scheme, posting about how it’s changed your life on Facebook.” 

“No-” 

“Flowerbook!”, Zitao says, as if having an epiphany. “Oh my god, that’s not even funny but I think I’m dying, you go online to Flowerbook and talk about your floral pyramid scheme-” 

Zitao sounds like a choked whale, and Sehun rolls his eyes. 

“I hate you.” 

Sehun says it, but sitting on a rock in the woods with flowers in his hands, watching Zitao laugh so hard he struggles to breathe, he has to admit that he does anything but.

\---

It’s 3 am, and Sehun can’t sleep, no matter how much he tries. He’s done everything, counted sheep, succumbed to scrolling through Instagram, gone back to counting sheep, tried to recite the times table of eight in his head. Nothing worked, so here he is, rustling through his old cupboard, trying to find his old iron. 

He’s humming under his breath, and he exclaims happily when he finds it. He takes a moment, because it’s something his therapist used to tell him to do, to take a moment when he feels good and let it sink in. He does, commits it to memory, and then reaches over to the glass of water where he’s delicately kept the flowers.

He removes a yellow one first, and moves to find the paper he knows he has tucked away in his bedside drawer. 

He sits on his knees for a second, surveying the supplies in front of him. He  _ could _ look how to do it up, but his phone is all the way on the other side of the room, so he settles on just going off Zitao’s roommate’s vague five-second instructions. 

He gently places the flower in between two sheets of paper. He’s always been good at meticulous work like this, especially if it involves flowers. Sehun picks up the iron, realises he forgot to plug it in, sighs, plugs it in, and then returns to his work. 

“On low,” he mumbles, checking the temperature. It is, amazingly, on low. 

“What did he say?”, Sehun whispers to himself. “15 seconds?” 

No one answers, which is good, because Sehun isn’t in the mood to scream “Holy fuck there’s a demon in my room” and wake up his parents. He decides 15 seconds sounds about right, and puts the iron down on the flower. 

He counts, all the way up till fifteen, and then stops, wondering if he should peel the paper off or wait for it to cool. He decides to do the former, and immediately regrets it, because it’s  _ hot _ . 

“Ow, ow, ow, ow,” he whispers. He’s an idiot. 

He looks down at the flower, and it seems that nothing has happened at all, and so he huffs and does it all over again. This time, however, it looks like he’s managed to burn several petals off. He huffs, again.

Looks like he’ll have to do the walk of shame to get his phone after all. 

Sehun looks it up, and figures out you aren’t supposed to move the iron, and it takes several gentle attempts. He tries again, and again, and again, because Zitao got him so many flowers, and that’s what Sehun does, he tries again.

Some of them don’t dry up all the way, and others start to curl up and brown at the edges, but some of them are actually passable. By the time Sehun gets to the last flower, the pretty blue one he’s been saving, he’d say they’re actually starting to look  _ good. _

He takes a deep breath as he delicately sets the last flower in between the paper. 

Hold the iron, put it down, pick it up, and repeat.    
  


He does it until that point where it starts to get dangerous, steels himself, and peels off the top layer of paper. 

It’s perfect.

\---

“Hi!”, Sehun almost yells when he opens the door for Zitao. “I need to show you something.” 

Zitao only has time to blink before Sehun’s pulling him to his room. 

“Look,” Sehun whispers, as if not to disturb what’s in his hands. “I actually pressed them.” 

Sehun is proud of his little collection of mostly not burnt flowers. Except for the brown at the edges, and the black spots on some of the petals, no one would know he’s an amateur. Zitao looks up from the flowers to Sehun’s face, eyes bright. 

“They’re so pretty,” he says, also whispering, and they stand there, staring at each other, Sehun smiling excitedly about the flowers he pressed. 

Sehun turns to his desk, letting the flowers spill out of his hands onto it, right next to the tube of eyelash glue he’d sneaked from his mother. Zitao seems to notice it. 

“What’s that for?”, he asks, and Sehun wonders if he should tell him. 

“I- uh, so I looked it up, and apparently you can use these things as tattoos?”, Sehun manages to say. He laughs nervously. “I was actually in the middle of uh, trying to put one on when you rang the doorbell.” 

Zitao stares at Sehun for a second, as if he’s trying to memorise his face, which is stupid, and definitely doesn’t make Sehun feel like he’s going to explode. And then Zitao asks something that would make any normal person explode. 

“Can I put it on for you?”

Sehun wills himself not to choke on his own breath, and for once, his body listens to him. He doesn’t know how to respond, but his stupid mouth does it anyway. 

“Yes,” he says, his tone weird, and voice shaky. 

Zitao doesn’t seem to notice the way Sehun swallows, and instead, simply asks. 

“Which one do you want?” 

And of course, Sehun’s fingers find the blue one, the perfect one. He’s proudest of it. 

He hands the flower to Zitao, and it’s quiet, charged, like so many of their moments are. Sehun stretches out his neck and points to where he wants it, and Zitao reaches for the eyelash glue. 

Sehun closes his eyes, the excitement of when he opened the door now mixing with his desperate focus on everything other than Zitao’s fingers on his neck. The eyelash glue is cold and sticky, and Sehun wants to focus on that, but then Zitao’s fingers are there and his breath shudders. 

“Done,” Zitao says, stepping away, a few moments later. Sehun opens his eyes and turns to the mirror, softly reaching a hand up to stroke his neck. 

It looks wonderfully pretty, softly placed on Sehun’s skin, curling up at his jaw. 

“The colour suits you,” Zitao says, as if he wants to say a million more things. 

Sehun turns to him, hand still on the flower, wondering how it got so quiet in the room so suddenly, and why the universe loves playing games with him. He doesn’t say any of that though, and just smiles instead.

“Thank you.”

\---

Sehun realises it’s been forever since he’s walked to Zitao’s house. The last time… he doesn’t want to think about the last time.

The two of them always preferred hanging out at Sehun’s place anyways. 

The road is still familiar though, just as familiar as Zitao talking about a million different things at the same time. 

“-and then she calls me a  _ himbo _ , and I’m like, excuse me, you’re 63, you shouldn’t even know what that word  _ means _ .” 

Sehun laughs so loud he startles a pigeon on one of the telephone wires. 

“She called you a  _ himbo _ ?” 

“Do you know how much it hurts, Hun-ah?”, Zitao asks dramatically, as they pass by the post office. “To be called a himbo by a sweet little old lady?” 

“I mean,” Sehun mumbles, “She’s not wrong.” 

Zitao looks at Sehun, overdramatic offense plastered over his face. A fly could easily make a home in his mouth. 

“How dare you,” Zitao whispers. “Hun-ah, I- I trusted you, and you just-” 

“Shut up, himbo.” 

Zitao’s seems to convey even more betrayal, if that was even possible. Sehun shakes his head and laughs. 

“Don’t make me say it, Hun-ah,” Zitao manages to say, through his obviously very real and very betrayed demeanour. 

“Say what?”, Sehun asks, and he’s skipping down the street now, turning to raise his eyebrows teasingly at Zitao. “Himbo,” he adds, barely able to contain his laughter. 

Zitao stares at him, and then deliberately mouths it out, making sure Sehun registers every single intonation. 

“Twink.”

Sehun makes a decision right there, to run faster than he has ever run in his life. 

He chases Zitao all the way to his house, and forgets about metaphors. 

\---

“Chanyeol told me that he’d let us take the car to the bubble tea place today evening,” Zitao informs Sehun, eyes bright, once Sehun has given Zitao the mandatory “how-dare-you-call-me-a-twink-even-if-it’s-true-doesn’t-mean-you-can-say-it” spiel and they’re sitting in Zitao’s backyard, sipping apple juice that Zitao somehow had in his fridge. The weather is nice, edging on chilly. “On the condition,” he continues, “That he gets to come along. That okay with you?” 

Sehun thinks of how he has always thought Chanyeol was pretty cool, until junior year when it seemed like he hated him. He gulps down any apprehension, along with a sip of his apple juice. 

“Sure,” he says. “It’ll be fun, having him third wheel like the old times.” 

Zitao grins at him, before turning and moving to get up. 

“Where are you going?”, Sehun asks curiously, laying flat on his back. There’s going to be grass stains on his hoodie, but he doesn’t really care. 

“Water,” Zitao says. “Ya know. The thing that keeps people alive?” 

“Apple juice has water in it,” Sehun grumbles, but he lets Zitao leave without saying anything else, because he wants a second alone in the sun, to be allowed to carefully caress the flower at his neck. 

He takes a moment. 

There is a sudden burst of water on his face and Sehun opens his eyes, because it is the beginning of winter and it should not be raining, only to find Zitao’s grinning face and a half empty bottle of water. 

“What the f-”, he starts, reaching out to grab the bottle from Zitao, except Zitao gets to his hand first and clasps it, and then proceeds to pour the rest of the water bottle on Sehun. 

Perhaps someone else would be angry at being drenched when it’s so close to being cold outside, but all Sehun thinks of is how soft the water is on his skin, and how kindly the world touches everyone, and then Sehun thinks of how light Zitao’s hand is on his own, and is hit by how gently his world touches him.

And then he is struck with several smaller realisations, drenched in water in his best friend’s backyard, that Zitao is his world and has been for a while and Sehun is too scared to fall into orbit, so he runs to places he doesn’t belong. There is a heaviness in that, a heaviness that belongs to gravity, and it settles in his stomach, and his breath moves out of his lungs to make space for it. 

So Sehun cannot breathe as he has a flower on his neck and water on his face and his best friend by his side, as he realises he’s been a moon, and Zitao’s been a planet, and to be a satellite is not an easy thing, but here he is anyways. 

“Hun-ah?”, Zitao asks, grin slipping off his face. “What’s wrong? Oh my god, did I hurt you?”, and his tone has a desperation that does not belong to planets, but Sehun’s mind is too clouded to realise that. “I’m sorry, I was just joking around, I-” 

And Sehun tightens his fingers, loosely clasped in Zitao’s, and pulls him down, hard enough that Zitao is lying by his side, close enough to touch him but not quite. 

“Take a moment,” he whispers, soft enough that the skies are not disturbed and loud enough that Zitao can hear him.

“Take a moment,” he says, again, and while Zitao does, Sehun catches his breath again. 

“Have you taken a moment?”, he asks, and Zitao says “yes” softly, and Sehun smiles. 

He empties his apple juice over Zitao’s head.

\---

Sehun is glad that there is no awkwardness between them after he’s changed into dry clothes and Zitao and his brother are in the driveway waiting to go get bubble tea, because the second he gets into the car, something is very,  _ very _ wrong. 

“Hey,” Zitao says, and he sounds tired, and that’s the first warning sign. 

“Hi,” Sehun says, settling into the backseat. “Uh, hey Chanyeol.” 

It’s the first time he’s met Chanyeol in years, and Sehun can’t say he was looking forward to it. 

“Sehun,” Chanyeol nods, and he meets Sehun’s eyes in the rearview mirror, and Sehun can’t say he’s not unsettled. “Nice to see you again. Last time we met, you were dying at our doorstep.” 

Sehun winces. He knows what Chanyeol’s talking about, but doesn’t remember much of it.

Zitao sends a glare Chanyeol’s way, and things feel wrong, and Sehun’s stomach drops. His neck itches.

“I’m fine now,” is what Sehun decides to say, trying to play it off. “How’ve you been?” 

“The same,” Chanyeol says, voice flat as he starts the car. 

Sehun sighs in realisation. The car ride is going to be horribly silent.

\---

It is, as Sehun expected, mostly silent in the car as they drive to get bubble tea that Zitao has tried so hard to get to Sehun. It seems as if Zitao and Chanyeol have argued, which is strange, because they barely ever argue. 

Silence doesn’t last for long, though, and it is swallowed in the sudden shuddering of the car when they’re halfway there. 

“Fuck,” whispers Chanyeol under his breath. He stops the car, and Zitao jolts out of where he’s been spacing out. Sehun watches. 

“Okay,” Chanyeol says, when the car stops, sigh implied in his voice. “Everybody out. We’ve got a puncture.”

They shuffle out of the car, and Sehun hates the tension in the air. Chanyeol looks pissed. 

Zitao walks over to the punctured tire and crouches down, giving it a look. He whistles lowly. 

“Oh, no way we’re getting anywhere on that,” he says. Chanyeol taps his foot impatiently. 

“Yeah, I figured, genius.” 

“Can’t we just change the tire?”, Sehun asks. 

“Oh,  _ of course _ , stupid us,” Chanyeol says, turning his glare to Sehun. “Panicking over something so easily fixed. Whatever would we have done without you, Oh Sehun?” 

Sehun blinks, and his heart hurts a little. He gravitates a step in Zitao’s direction for comfort, on instinct.

“What did I even do to you?”, he asks, and he’s surprised at how direct it comes out.

Chanyeol’s eyebrow twitches, and then he laughs. 

  
“What did you do to me?”, he asks. “Oh my god. Do you seriously not know? It’s not about what you’ve done to me!”, Chanyeol says, voice rising steadily. “It’s about-” 

“Don’t yell at Sehun!”

Zitao’s voice is louder than Chanyeol, and it rings through the patch they’ve been driving through. Chanyeol stares at him, open-mouthed.

Zitao ignores him, turning to Sehun. 

“We used the spare tire we bought for the car last month,” he explains, in a voice so soft that it’s hard to believe he was shouting a second ago. “It’s not in the car anymore.”

“Oh,” Sehun says, and then he thinks of something he learnt in college. “Could I open the boot?”, he asks. 

Zitao tilts his head at him, and then shrugs. 

“Sure,” he says. “Listen, I’m just going to talk to Chanyeol for a second, if that’s okay. If you hear yelling, don’t worry about it.” 

He winks, possibly to make Sehun laugh, but all Sehun does is gently pat his shoulder. Zitao turns to his brother, and they walk to the side. 

Sehun open the boot and then makes his way over to it, crossing his fingers that he’s right. The boot is mostly empty, save for a single bag of plastic tubes, and some coins. His fingers scrabble around the edge of the boot, and he finds it. It’s a false back, as most luxury car boots tend to have. Sehun lifts it, rolling the coins and the bag of tubes to the side, and there it is. A spare tire, in all its glory. 

He can hear vague yelling from further down the road, but he braces himself and shifts out in front of Zitao and Chanyeol again. 

“Hey, uh, guys?”, he says, and Zitao immediately stops saying whatever he’s been angrily saying to Chanyeol. Chanyeol glares at him. 

“What?”, he snaps, and it looks like Zitao wants to fight him, but he doesn’t. 

“I- I found a spare tire,” Sehun explains. 

Zitao immediately walks over to his side, and whoops when he sees the tire. 

“Hun-ah, you’re amazing,” he says, as he pulls the tire out. 

Sehun opens his mouth and then closes it, still staring at Chanyeol, and wondering exactly what he fucked up to get someone as good natured as Zitao’s brother to hate him so much. He sighs. Chanyeol walks to the front of the car and pulls out his phone, leaving Sehun staring at nothing, and Zitao to fix the tire. 

“What’s going on?”, Sehun asks gently, because he knows Chanyeol doesn’t like him, but Chanyeol isn’t just angry at him. He leans right next to where Zitao is crouching. 

Zitao laughs, a dry, bitter laugh. It doesn’t suit him.

“Oh, you know. Our parents did that stupid thing again where they compared him to me.” 

Sehun kneels near Zitao, before deciding to sit on the road. Hardly anyone uses it anyway. Zitao looks over at him, before turning back to the tire, hand gripping the wrench tightly. 

“They essentially said ‘ _ oh, Chanyeol, we love you, but why couldn’t you be a bit more like Zitao? His degree gives him so many options, and here you are in your studio _ ’, which is stupid, because Chanyeol’s studio is doing amazing right now, and at least he’s doing what  _ he _ wants to. And so of course, he’s offended, except,” and Zitao sounds a little broken when he says this, “he takes it out on me.” 

Sehun watches as Zitao almost breaks the tool in his hands. 

“He says,” Zitao’s voice is shaking, “that of course our parents love me more. To compensate. That because I’m adopted, they owe me something, so  _ of course _ they would love me.” 

Sehun always forgets that Zitao’s adopted, because it’s just never been a big deal for Zitao, but now, hearing this, it imprints into his memory. 

“Zitao-”, Sehun begins, gently. He can’t shake how wrong this all feels. 

Zitao turns to him. 

“Why does he take it out on me?”, he whispers, and then Sehun’s hugging him, because he has no words for this. 

A few seconds pass in the awkward hug, Sehun sitting and Zitao crouching. 

“I’ve gotten grease on your ja-”, Zitao starts, but Sehun isn’t having it. 

“Shh,” Sehun says. Then, “I’m sorry.” 

Zitao pulls away and smiles at Sehun, a real smile. 

“I missed you,” he breathes out, and Sehun’s heart lurches. “I forgot how good you were at calming me down.” 

And Sehun should apologize again, but he can barely breathe, so he doesn’t. He sits, and gives Zitao company, and hopes that it’s enough. 

That’s all he can do sometimes.

\---

Zitao gets the tire fixed, and they finally manage to get to the bubble tea place, but Sehun has been feeling strange since Chanyeol yelled at him, and the feeling only magnifies when they enter the store. It’s dimly lit with fluorescent lighting that flickers, and it smells like burnt caramel (Sehun knows what that smells like from personal experience.) 

Chanyeol stalks over to the plastic chairs after mumbling that he doesn’t want anything, and Sehun is really beginning to wonder why he insisted on coming, before turning to Zitao and smiling at him. 

He ignores the pit in his stomach, the itch at his neck, because for once Zitao needs him and Sehun is not going to let him down. 

He hopes. 

Zitao smiles back at him, and they walk up to the counter to order their own bubble teas, because Sehun’ll be damned if he lets Chanyeol and himself ruin something ZItao’s been planning for so long. 

“Hey,” Sehun says, trying to maintain his smile as he talks to the bored cashier. “We’ll, uh, have a chocolate bubble tea, and-” 

He turns to Zitao to ask what bubble tea he wants, before the cashier interrupts him. 

“We don’t have chocolate bubble tea,” she says, sounding like she’d rather be anywhere else. “We ran out this morning.” 

Sehun opens his mouth and then closes it, and that stupid feeling in his stomach intensifies. He pushes it down. 

“I- uh, what are you having?”, Sehun asks Zitao. 

“One Taro, please,” Zitao says, addressing the cashier. He looks at Sehun. “There’s another bubble tea place a few miles away, we can drive to get you choco-” 

“No! No, it’s okay,” Sehun says, perhaps a little too loud. He turns back to the cashier, who looks done with them. “Can you- Can you make it two Taro’s?” 

She punches it in. 

“Your total’s on the screen,” she says, refusing to make eye contact with either of them at this point. Zitao moves to pull out his wallet, and Sehun tries to stop him, but Zitao is persistent. 

Once Zitao pays, they start to head back to the table, but Sehun feels too heavy.

“Zitao,” he says, and it feels  _ horrible _ . “I- uh, I’m gonna stop by the bathroom.” 

Zitao looks at him, and nods. Sehun offers what little comfort he can. 

“Try talking to your brother if you want to,” he says, trying not to eye Chanyeol too obviously. “But if he gets too dickish, just pull out your phone or something.” 

Zitao grins weakly at that. 

“Don’t worry about me,” he says. 

Sehun tries to get Zitao’s grin out of his head as he hurries to the bathroom. 

\---

Sehun’s breath shudders as he stares at himself in the cracked mirror. 

_ Pathetic _ .

One of the few times where Zitao needs him, and here Sehun is, having a breakdown over a terrible feeling that came out of nowhere for no reason. 

“This is not how it was supposed to go,” he says, out loud, and then he laughs, and it’s so bitter that it scares him. It scares him, how resigned he is to the belief that things never go according to plan. 

“Not how it was supposed to go,” he chokes out once more, and his neck  _ itches.  _ Sehun brings his hand to his neck, and scratches, and his hand is  _ angry _ , because Sehun is angry at life and himself and so many different things. 

The blue flower that flutters down to settle in the sink looks sad and abandoned in contrast with the yellowed ceramic. 

That’s when Sehun starts sobbing. 

There is anger in his tears too, anger at himself for not being able to hold up for one goddamn evening, really, he’s supposed to be better now, he’s done the therapy, he’s taken the meds, he’s done all of it and yet here he fucking is. 

_ (and yes, yes, recovery is a process, Sehun  _ knows _ , but that doesn’t stop him from being angry.)  _

He’s angry at himself for that, and for being a coward, and for a million different things, and he’s angry at the universe because the universe is gentle to what it touches and yet it can’t be kind to Huang Zitao. And he’s angry at Chanyeol, because Chanyeol can yell at him all he wants, but he’s supposed to be Zitao’s older brother and the unfairness of it aches because Zitao deserves better and it all comes back to being angry at himself, because if Zitao deserves better than Chanyeol, he deserves a lot better than Sehun. 

He is angry, and Sehun barely ever gets angry, but Zitao needs someone to be gentle with him, and Sehun wants to be that someone, but here he is, having a fucking breakdown in a bubble tea shop’s bathroom. 

And of course, in the back of his mind are all the college demons and the “my personality sucks” demons, and generally more pressing matters but Sehun knows how to deal with them so they get shoved where he can’t see them or hear them, because they’ll stop being brave once the current crisis is over. 

He stands in front of the mirror and the grimy sink and he sobs in anger and nothing else, and it’s heavy and it hurts. 

He doesn’t know how long it’s been when the door swings open, and he scrambles to dry his tears, and pretend that nothing is happening, because he doesn’t want to be tonight’s Insane Overemotional Bathroom Man for a stranger.

Except the opposite of a stranger walks in, and Sehun is confronted by a very surprised Zitao, staring at Sehun who still has tears rolling down his cheeks and anger in the hands he’s pretending to wash. 

“Hun-ah?”, Zitao says, and his voice sounds so worried that Sehun starts to shake. 

“I-”, Sehun starts, but his hands won’t stop shaking and he can’t complete his sentence. He realises that he’s been gone for a while, and Zitao has come looking for him, like he always does. 

Zitao crosses the space between them, and the concern on his face is enough to melt the anger in Sehun away. In the process, though, he loses all the heaviness that’s been keeping him pinned down, and he stumbles. 

He stumbles, and Zitao catches him. 

“I’m sorry,” Sehun struggles to say, head resting on Zitao’s shoulder, in a sort of pseudo hug, and the tears are back. “I’m sorry I’m such a fucking mess. I’m sorry that you need me and I can’t stop having a breakdown for one fucking second.” 

“Sehun-” 

“I’m sorry,” slightly louder now, “I’m sorry I’m always looking for you for help and can’t even be there for you when you’re hurting, and I’m sorry your brother is being a dick and I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m-” 

“ _ Hun-ah _ .”

Zitao’s voice is firm, and Sehun stops talking, afraid of complicating this mess more than he already has, afraid of having to apologise for abandoning Zitao because he was  _ (is)  _ a coward, afraid and no longer angry, just shaking under Zitao’s fingers. 

“Don’t cry,” Zitao whispers, and the softness Sehun always receives is back. “Don’t cry.” 

“I don’t deserve you.” 

And there it is, what it all boils down to when it comes to them. Sehun doesn’t deserve Zitao, but he gets him anyways.

“You can’t say that,” Zitao says. “You’re not allowed to say that. What do you mean you aren’t there for me? How many times have you cleaned me up after I’ve gotten the shit beaten out of me.” 

“That doesn’t count,” Sehun says, and his shaking is calming down, because Zitao has caught him. 

It’s a strange relationship to have, to be a little bit in love with your best friend for forever, and to hold that for years. It’s strange to want to kiss and hold Zitao at a time like this and it’s strange to want him to wipe Sehun’s tears away because Zitao would do it if Sehun asked. It’s the first time that Sehun  _ truly  _ allows himself to consider what would have happened if he hadn’t run away from Zitao, allows himself to think about a world where Zitao holds him like this, but not because he’s having a breakdown, and they aren’t standing in the middle of a public bathroom. 

“How?”, Zitao asks gently. “How is it different?” 

Sehun always expected himself to start sobbing the second he considered any other route than the one he’s taken with Zitao, but instead, it steadies him. He supports his own weight. Zitao continues to hold him. 

“I’m supposed to be there for you,” he whispers, not answering Zitao’s question. 

“You are.” 

“I wasn’t.”

It hangs over their heads like the sun has developed a shadow, the subtle acknowledgement that Sehun left, he stood up and walked out of Zitao’s life and Sehun is choking because of how he’s holding his own breath, waiting for Zitao to address it directly. 

“You  _ are _ ,” is what he gets instead. “You are,” Zitao insists, “and that’s what matters.” 

Zitao is so good to him, Sehun thinks, for probably the hundredth time. Zitao is so good to him, and he wonders if the Earth has ever loved the Moon as much as Zitao loves him.

And for once, it doesn’t matter to Sehun that Zitao might not love him the same way that Sehun does. 

He stands there, and Zitao holds him, and they love each other, and for a second, for a brief, fleeting second, where the last straggling tear drops off of Sehun’s face and Zitao’s hand pauses on his back, that is all that matters, and that is enough. 

\---

“Sehun,” Chanyeol mumbles, sounding quite awkward, after Zitao and Sehun clean up and go outside to their table and finish their bubble tea. “Can I talk to you for a second?” 

The air between Chanyeol and Zitao has seemed to clear, at least a little, in the time Sehun was busy angrily sobbing in the bathroom. Zitao looks at Chanyeol, and they have the kind of conversation that only siblings can have, the one with the eyebrow wiggling and the mouthing of words without actually moving lips. 

“I’ll be in the car,” Zitao announces, after he has successfully up-up-down-down-left-right-left-right-B-A’ed with his eyebrows. 

Zitao leaves, as if he’s being pushed out of the store, and Sehun turns to Chanyeol. 

“What’s wrong?”, Sehun asks, quietly, still hesitant to meet Chanyeol’s eye. 

Chanyeol coughs, as if he doesn't want to be there. Sehun agrees with the sentiment. 

“I- uh… I-” 

Chanyeol pauses, takes a breath, and cracks his knuckles. 

“I’m sorry,” he finally manages to spit out. Sehun stares at him like he’s been slapped. 

“I’m sorry,” Chanyeol continues. “For, uh, yelling at you.” 

Sehun, admittedly, holds grudges, but he does not withhold forgiveness. Usually, he would accept the apology, look away, smile a little maybe. But of course, today has just been  _ weird _ , so he finally makes eye contact. 

“Why do you hate me?”

Chanyeol looks like he wants to yell at him again, and Sehun watches as he reigns his emotions in. 

He sighs.

“Three quarters into Zitao’s junior year,” Chanyeol starts, and it seems that he’s directly launching into the explanation, his voice strained. “My baby brother came home and cried into his pillow for an hour straight.” 

Sehun’s heart sinks. He can’t speak.

“And once I finally get him to stop crying, and ask him exactly what happened a million times- because my brother doesn’t cry like this unless someone has hurt him horribly- he tells me, “Sehun’s been ignoring me for 3 days now.” And I sit there, wondering what to tell him to get him to calm down.” 

“Turns out I can’t think of anything,” Chanyeol continues. “So I hold on to my brother and tell him it’ll be okay and ask him if he wants me to make him a sundae, and he says  _ no _ . He says no, and that night he sleeps in my bed, because I am older and I need to make sure he’s okay.” 

Sehun wants to cry, but he’s out of tears for today. 

“And then, Sehun,” Chanyeol says, voice heavy. “Then, you don’t talk to him for another year. Do you know what he does in that year? He gets into 83 fights.” 

“No,” Sehun chokes out, and he doesn’t realise why he hasn’t connected the dots before. He’s always known it, deep down, but to hear it being thrown out in the open by someone who isn’t his own thoughts. 

“Yes,” Chanyeol hisses. “I counted, every single time he’d come back limping, or with a busted lip, or with a black eye. But you know the funny thing, Sehun? He’d always come back with all his wounds taken care of.” 

Sehun has his hands over his eyes, pressing till he can see those floaty dots. “No,” he whispers again. 

“Turns out, you’d made him promise to come to you after fights. And he figured out that if he showed up to your house after a fight, you’d talk to him. So, I had to watch him, get into fights and lose, not because he couldn’t win, but because he wanted so desperately to talk to you.” 

Sehun takes in a shuddery breath. Everything hurts.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I’m sorry.” 

“Sehun,” and Chanyeol’s voice is gentler now. “I don’t hate you. I’ve been forced to spend too much time around you to hate you. But you have to understand-” 

“I  _ hurt  _ him,” Sehun says, barely registering Chanyeol’s voice. 

Chanyeol sighs. 

“You sound just like him,” Chanyeol says, and Sehun looks up at him, mind struggling to catch up. 

“What do you mean?”, Sehun asks. 

Chanyeol raises an eyebrow. 

“Do you remember the night before he left for college?”

Sehun does remember some of it, remembers getting into his father’s whiskey collection and pulling out a glass. He remembers stumbling over to Zitao’s house. He remembers Zitao carrying him home. Sehun still can’t stand the taste of whiskey to this day. 

“Not a lot of it. I know that I showed up at your house, but I don’t really… know what happened.” 

Chanyeol looks away from Sehun. 

“It was one am, and we’d just finished packing for Zitao. The doorbell rang and Zitao went to get it, and there you were. I came out just in time to see Zitao rush to sit you down on the porch.” 

Sehun tries to reach for the memory, but he finds nothing. 

“You looked like a mess, Sehun,” Chanyeol says. “Your eyes for glossy and you weren’t responding to anything Zitao was asking you, you were just clinging to him. Didn’t help that you were so tiny back then too.”

“Zitao’s panicking at this point,” he continues. “He thinks you’ve done hard drugs or something, keeps asking you what you took. But then he realises he can smell whiskey on you, and asks you if you’ve been drinking, and you start sobbing. Crying so hard you can barely breathe and I watch him hold you through it.” 

Sehun grips his left hand in his right. 

“And you start apologizing, over and over again, saying you’re sorry you “left him”. Zitao is just trying to make sure you’re okay, because we had no idea how much you’d drunk.” 

“Half a glass,” Sehun cuts in. He needs to say  _ something _ .

Chanyeol gives him a look. 

“Lightweight, huh?” 

“I was 18.” 

“Which is why you shouldn’t have been drinking in the first place,” Chanyeol shoots back. “Coming back to it, once you were done apologizing, you look up at him, and you say something along the lines of “please don’t go, don’t leave me like I left you, I’m sorry.” If I’m being honest, I wanted to punch you so hard when you said that.” 

Sehun would let Chanyeol punch him right now after hearing that. 

“We didn’t have a car available, so he picked you up and  _ walked  _ to your house.”

“I remember that part.” 

“Of course you do,” and Sehun winces. “When he came back,” Chanyeol says, tapping his fingers on the table, “he kept asking me if it was possible that he’d hurt you somehow, that that’s why you were ignoring him.” 

“I’m sorry,” Sehun whispers, because he has nothing else to say to this. “I’m so sorry.” 

Chanyeol isn’t the person he should be saying this to. 

“You both need to talk,” Chanyeol says. “I don’t hate you, Sehun, but you need to fix this. It’s not fair.” 

“I know,” Sehun rasps out. 

When they make their way to the car, Zitao is waiting for them, and Sehun’s heart aches at the thought of how much pain he’s caused him, and for a second he wants to run up to Zitao and ask him why he’s ever extended him any kindness, why he loves him when Sehun has hurt him so badly, but then Zitao smiles at him and all of it melts away, and Sehun realises, with a defeated sigh, that he will not be able to be fair to Zitao tonight. 

Tonight, he indulges in yet another series of moments of weakness, indulges in holding Zitao longer than he should when he hugs him and thanks him for the bubble tea, indulges in watching Zitao smile at him.

Tonight, Sehun is not brave.

\---

It’s Sunday morning, and Sehun wakes up knowing he must talk to his parents. 

It’s the one day both of them are home and not busy, and if Sehun postpones this, it’s just going to get worse and worse, and he needs to get this over with. 

He’s not looking forward to it. Which is why he doesn’t bring it up at breakfast. Or lunch. Or when they’re all sitting on the couch watching a stupid game show that they used to bond over back when Sehun was a child and the internet still hadn’t figured out that high contrast did not necessarily mean visually appealing. 

It’s when they all settle around the table, getting ready for early dinner, just as it starts to get dark outside, that Sehun decides to spit it out. 

  
“Can we talk?”, he blurts out, and his pulse quickens instantly. He’s terrified. 

“Sure, Sehunnie,” his father says, trying to zoom in on something on his phone while simultaneously laying the table. 

His mom doesn’t respond, too busy handling hot food and trying not to burn anyone. 

“No, I mean, can we like forget about dinner and stuff for a second? Please? I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”

His mother sets the plate of food on the table down, and looks expectantly at him. Sehun’s father finally lets his phone be. 

“What is it?”, his mother asks, gently, in that almost playful tone that Sehun is so familiar with. 

Sehun opens his mouth, and closes it, before he decides that it is now or never, and he spits it out. 

“I’m dropping out.” 

Sehun doesn’t know what he’s expecting. He isn’t going in with thoughts of hugs and “it’s okay, love” but he’s also not expecting yelling and screaming. He has no idea what’s coming, and his leg bounces nervously. 

“What?”, his dad whispers, looking at Sehun like he didn’t hear him correctly. 

Sehun clears his throat and tries to stop his hands from shaking. 

“I’m dropping out of college.” 

“What do you mean you’re dropping out of college?”, his mother asks, and her voice is higher than it usually is. 

Sehun’s stomach drops. This will go horribly, however it goes. 

“I’m not going back. I-” 

“Sehunnie,” his dad mumbles out, as if he’s finally registered what Sehun said, head already in his hands. “Don’t do this to me. Tell me it’s a prank. Don’t do this to me, kid, please.” 

“How can you just say you’re dropping out?”, his mother asks, glancing worriedly at his father before looking back at him.

“I can’t,” Sehun says, and he can feel tears start to pool. “I can’t go back, I can’t, I just-” 

“It’s one more year, Sehun. What do you mean you can’t do it? You’ve done it for three years, what’s one more year?”, his mother says, and Sehun is surprised because she’s  _ angry _ .

“That’s what I’m trying to say,” Sehun says, voice trembling. “I’ve done three years of it, and I don’t think I could get through another.” 

“This isn’t fair,” his mother says, shaking her head. “This isn’t fair, Sehun. You can’t just up and decide that you don’t want to do something as important as college. What happened? Is it too hard? Are you just giving up?” 

Sehun shrinks back in his chair. That hurts. 

“Mom-” 

“Look at your father,” she says, and the situation has escalated way too quickly for Sehun to be able to keep up. “What about all the money we’ve put in? What about the loans we’ve taken?” 

His father is ignoring in the conversation, hands at his temples, staring into space. 

“I don’t-”, Sehun starts, and his voice cracks, and he’s trying so hard not to cry, but it’s not working particularly well. “Please, I’ve been thinking about it since the end of my second semester. I just- I can’t do it. Please, don’t make me do it.” 

His mother shakily sits down, and she looks like she’s close to panicking. 

“I can’t believe this, Sehun. You were always pestering us about college, and when we finally scrape up enough money to send you, you do this. You don’t need perfect grades, just finish this year, get a diploma, at least do something with the money and effort we’ve put in.” 

“It’s a decision I need to make,” Sehun whispers. “I need to-” 

“I know you better than you know yourself, Oh Sehun,” his mother says, loud enough to drown anything else out. “And this isn’t a decision-”

It’s like everything freezes, and something in Sehun snaps. 

“No you don’t,” Sehun whispers. 

“Excuse me?” 

Sehun doesn’t talk back to his parents. That’s just how it works. They have a stable family life, and they usually get along, but even when his parents are being irrational, Sehun doesn’t correct them, because it’s always been like that. He doesn’t talk back, and they may get along, but his parents barely know him. The last time he ever talked to them openly about something regarding his personality was when he came out to them, which was years ago. 

“You don’t know me, Mom,” Sehun says, and his voice is surprisingly stable. “What’s my favourite color?” 

“Black,” she says, without missing a beat. 

Sehun laughs. His favourite colour has been pink since senior year. 

“You barely know me,” he says. “You can’t make my decisions for me.” 

His mother stares at him, flabbergasted. 

“One color doesn’t decide things,” she tries. Sehun’s father is still staring at the table. 

“Okay, you want more stuff?”, Sehun asks, and  _ he’s  _ angry now. “I was on meds for depression. College makes me feel so empty that I can barely stand after a day of classes. I worked a weekend job and a day job simply so that I could save enough to pay debts off, and I almost have enough. Did you know about any of that?” 

His parents are staring at him like he’s grown another head, and it seems that Sehun stood up at some point. 

“I’m so  _ tired _ ,” Sehun whispers. “All the  _ time _ .”

“And it’s okay that you don’t support my decision.” 

His mother opens her mouth, as if to say something, but Sehun shakes his head. 

“I’ll only stay with you for as long as my semester break was supposed to last. I’ll use the money I’ve saved, get a place somewhere, maybe in the city. I’m sorry, I won’t be able to pay off the debt immediately, but when I stabilise and get a job, I’ll pay you as soon as I can.” 

“You can’t just cut yourself off from us,” his mother attempts. 

“I’m not,” Sehun says. “At least, I hope I’m not. I’m just making sure I’m not dependent on you anymore, so that I have the agency to make my own decisions over something that affects me so much. Whether you continue to talk to me, and consider me your son is up to you.” 

His parents stare at him, and Sehun  _ aches _ . 

“I’m leaving,” he announces. “We need some time to cool down. I’ll be back later, don’t stay up for me.” 

“Sehun-”, his father tries this time. 

Sehun ignores him.

He leaves.

\---

For all his bravado and dramaticness when he was confronting his parents, the second Sehun walks out of his house, he panics. 

It takes three steps down his driveway till he’s on the verge of hyperventilating, and by the time he’s on the street, Sehun is sure his lungs are going to explode. 

“Oh my god,” he whispers under his breath. “Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god.” 

Sehun needs to sit down and he needs to run away as far as he can, and he needs to do it all at the same time. He’s being pulled in directions he can’t name, and he’s choking back a sob as it happens. 

A small part of him wants him to go back to his house and tell his parents he was being insane and he’ll go back to college, he’ll do it, but Sehun squashes it down. He’s not spent all that time working towards making this decision to turn it around just like that. 

Sehun wonders if it would be socially acceptable to scream in the middle of the street at 8 pm, and it wouldn’t. His legs, it seems, have a mind of their own, and between sitting down and never getting up, and running away, they seem to have chosen running. 

He would wonder where he’s going, but that would be another thought in his head, and Sehun has quite frankly had enough of thinking. He runs, and runs, and he doesn’t know where he’s going, and it feels like a nice bit of irony that physically running away helps him stop feeling horrible about metaphorically running away. Fuck irony. It’s his least favourite literary device. 

His legs carry him and his eyes blur, and he’s lucky that barely anyone drives in their town, because he’s definitely not looking both ways before crossing streets right now. Sehun runs, and runs, until his body screams at him, that it’s enough, that he has run enough. 

He drops right where he is at that instant, in something resembling a sitting position, and he realises he’s in The Spot, the little clearing by the lake. 

He reaches for his phone almost instinctively, because he knows he’s not going to get up for a while, and he doesn’t know if he can do this alone. 

He finds Zitao’s name like it’s natural, and his fingers tap out the message asking him to come to the spot on their own. 

Sehun puts his phone back in his pocket, and wonders if he should scream. 

He looks up at the moon and the moon looks down on him. They are the same. 

The moon does not scream, so neither does Sehun.

\---

When Zitao arrives, Sehun is lying down in the grass, eyes closed, replaying every mistake he’s made in his life. Deplorable pastime, but it’s what happens no matter what he tries. 

“Hun-ah?”

Sehun opens his eyes when he hears Zitao’s voice, but he doesn’t turn to look. 

“Lie down with me,” he says, and it sounds tender, because Sehun is tired of over analyzing the tone he uses. 

“What’s going on?”, Zitao asks, as he settles down near Sehun. Sehun turns, and blinks when he finds Zitao’s face right in front of him. 

It snaps him out of the haze he’s been in since he yelled at his mom, and he’s back to being short of breath. All he can think of is the conversation he had with Chanyeol the day before, about how much he owes Zitao, and he knows calling Zitao was a mistake. 

Zitao seems to notice this, and he reaches his hand out to grip Sehun’s forearm. 

“Breathe, Hun,” he says, and the nickname makes it worse. 

“I told my parents I wasn’t going back to college,” Sehun blurts out. “They weren’t very happy about it.” 

“Oh,” Zitao says. They’re both lying on their sides, looking at each other, and Sehun is both glad and resentful of the small distance between them. “What happened?”

“I yelled at my mom,” Sehun says. “Told them I’d saved up and I’ll move out in two weeks. I feel horrible.” 

“ _ You _ yelled at your mom?”

Zitao’s voice is surprised, and rightfully so. It’s Sehun they’re talking about, after all. 

“She told me she knew me better than I did,” Sehun explains. “Yeah, right. She doesn’t even know my favourite color.”

Sehun laughs bitterly. When he stops, he has to stop himself from crying. 

“God, I suck,” and his hands come up to cover his face. “I’m literally the worst.” 

“No,” and it comes immediately. “You aren’t,” Zitao says, firm. 

“They have all rights to be upset,” Sehun says. “They put their life on hold, went into debt, did everything, and now I’m just giving up. I’d be upset too, but here I am, yelling at them like I have the moral high ground.”

“It’s your decision to make, Sehun. If you don’t want to do it anymore, you don’t want to do it.”

“I wish I didn’t have to make it,” Sehun confesses. “I wish I didn’t have to decide between my sanity and a degree that would make everyone around me happy.” 

“You come first,” Zitao says. “Before anyone else, you come first.” 

“But that’s selfish,” Sehun says. He’s done enough of being selfish. 

“It isn’t selfish to want to be happy.” 

They fall into silence for a while, and Sehun holds his breath as he looks at Zitao. 

“My parents will never forgive me,” he whispers finally. Zitao looks at him, and shakes his head, and Sehun watches his face change. 

Zitao laughs, and it’s an airy sound, but it’s so sad that Sehun hurts, hurts from the inside out. 

“Believe me, Hun-ah”, he says, and he is gentle in this, like he is gentle in everything that concerns Sehun, but his voice is so sad, and Sehun feels like he’s being punched in the gut. “If you love someone enough, you’ll forgive them for just about anything.”

If Sehun wasn’t lying down, his knees would’ve probably given out right then. He knows what that means, he knows what Zitao is talking about, and it seems like that shadow the sun developed isn’t a shadow anymore. 

He doesn’t know what to say, so he doesn’t say anything, staring at Zitao, who is still looking at him so heartbreakingly softly. Sehun wonders if this is it.

And then he knows it. 

“Can I ask you something?”, Zitao asks, quietly, as if Sehun is delicate. At this point, Sehun probably is. 

His heart has dropped further than he thought was possible. 

“Anything,” Sehun whispers, even though he really doesn’t want to hear this. 

“Why did you stop talking to me?” 

There it is. 

It slaps him across the face, how they’ve spent that past week or so not mentioning it and managing to fall into pattern again, and how this question turns all that over. It’s his fault, and he knows it, but it never hurts less every time he thinks of it. 

What does he tell Zitao? “I developed a crush on you and I couldn’t handle it so I pushed you way except I think doing that just made things worse and also somewhere along the way I fell in love with you and I’m pretty sure I’m still very much in love with you okay thanks goodbye”? It’s honest, but Sehun would die before he says that. “I became a spy and couldn't share anything about my life anymore” and Sehun is yelling at his brain, because this is not the time for that. 

A million different responses circle through his head, but the words that spill out of his mouth do so unbidden. 

“You’re a planet,” he says, simply. 

Silence. 

“You’re a planet,” Sehun says again, and it terrifies him how brave he’s being. “And I’m a moon, and being in orbit means trusting gravity, but I’m  _ scared _ .” 

Zitao is looking at him with an expression he can’t place, and Sehun fidgets. 

  
“I don’t think I’ve ever been more sorry about something than I am about abandoning you like that. It was a shitty thing to do, and you didn’t deserve it. You didn’t deserve to be pushed away just because- because I-”

Sehun pauses, trying to find a way to say “started loving you in a way I’m scared you wouldn’t love me back in” without actually saying it. Surely the planet thing was confession enough.

“I’m sorry,” and Sehun has nothing else to offer Zitao. These past few days have been too much emotional venting for him to handle. “I was barely 17 and I didn’t know how to process feelings, and I should’ve  _ talked _ to you, but-” 

When Zitao kisses him, Sehun can’t breathe. 

He has spent a lot of time imagining what it would be like to kiss Zitao, and he always knew Zitao would be careful with him, but now that it is happening and Sehun cannot breathe, all Sehun can think of is how gentle Zitao’s lips are against his, how softly his fingers touch Sehun’s face. 

And then it actually hits him, what’s happening. Huang Zitao is kissing him and Sehun is kissing him right back. 

Somewhere in the back of his head, Sehun is aware of every conclusion he has ever jumped to regarding Zitao crumbling and he doesn’t even know what to do because this is the one outcome he’s never expected, the one thing he always thought would never happen. He doesn’t know what to do except for kiss Zitao back, so he kisses him, and he kisses him, and he kisses him, until the lack of air starts making him lightheaded. 

“I’m sorry,” he gasps out, as they pull away. “I’m sorry,” and Zitao’s hands are still on his face, and he looks at Sehun so gently and Sehun is  _ crying _ . 

“Don’t cry,” Zitao whispers, wiping tears away from Sehun’s face. “Don’t cry, Hun-ah, it’s not your fault.” 

Sehun shakes his head, and everything is so bright and loud and Huang Zitao just  _ kissed _ him.

“It is,” he sobs. “It is, we could’ve- I could’ve-” 

“I should’ve said something earlier too, Hun-ah,” Zitao whispers. “I should’ve asked you what happened directly instead of making excuses to see you.” 

“I’m sorry,” Sehun cries, and everything falls away, all the pretense and tiptoeing crumbling into nothing. “I’m sorry, I love you, I love you,” and he means it in every way he has ever felt it. 

“Sehun,” Zitao whispers, and then he’s kissing him again, and again, and again, and Sehun lets him, and each kiss says something that Sehun desperately needs to hear. 

_ It’s okay, I’ve got you, I love you too, I love you, I love you. _

Sehun clings to Zitao’s jacket, and when they pull away, they’re lying on the grass in their Spot and Zitao has just kissed Sehun and Sehun has just kissed Zitao and there is a burning inside Sehun, but it doesn’t hurt, just warms him enough that he’s not shivering at the hints of winter in the air. 

“Zitao,” he whispers, and there is awe and adoration and other lovely things that don’t start with the letter ‘a’ in Zitao’s eyes like there always are and Sehun is absolutely crushed by them.

“Hun-ah,” Zitao says, and he’s glowing, and Sehun isn’t sure if it’s because of the moon or him. Zitao wants to ask him something, so Sehun listens. 

“Have you ever heard of binary stars?” 

\---

“Put something on, please?”, Sehun asks. 

They’re sitting in Blue Diner, all alone. Zitao figured out that Sehun hadn’t eaten and dragged him there. Luckily, Jongin was on closing up shift, so he let them stay, on the condition that ZItao would lock up for him. 

It is strange, to be sitting here so casually after what has just happened, after they have kissed and said they have loved each other for longer than they’ve known, but then again, it has always been like this, so Sehun understands why not much has changed, except for the sudden lightness. 

“What song?”, Zitao asks, and Sehun wonders if the script has room for a kiss. 

“Any song,” Sehun whispers, and they know it all by heart, but they do it anyways. 

“Okay,” Zitao says. 

And he does. 

The song that starts from the jukebox is slow and soft and Sehun doesn’t know it. Zitao turns to him. 

“You know,” Zitao says, and this is not a part of the script, but that is fine, because Sehun has been stupidly brave today, and there’s no point in stopping now. “I always kinda assumed we’d go to prom together.” 

Sehun pushes the spiral that that would normally induce away for another day. For now he sits, and looks at Zitao standing near the jukebox, and asks. “You did?” 

“Uh huh,” Zitao says, hand reaching out to flick a tissue off the jukebox. “Thought I’d teach you how to slow dance, which doesn’t make any sense, because you’re the dancer out of the two of us.” 

  
Sehun tries not to think of why Zitao never got to do that, and looks at him. 

“You wanna try now?” 

Zitao blinks at him, and the smile that spreads across his face breaks Sehun’s heart and puts it back together again, stronger than ever. 

He takes a step forward, and extends his hand out to Sehun. Sehun takes it. 

They find the spots their hands are supposed to go, and slot into place with each other like the sun’s light finds the moon. Zitao’s hand is wrapped so completely in Sehun’s, and Sehun is wrapped so completely in Zitao, that for a second they stand, without moving, and they’re both thinking about if they’ll ever be able to figure out where one of them ends and the other begins after this. 

Zitao hums along, softly, as they start moving, slowly, lazily. Sehun lets Zitao lead, even though he’s clumsy and shuffles his steps and smiles apologetically at Sehun for it. They have a lot to talk about, Sehun knows, but for now, they have each other, and it’s been years but they still feel love like they always have. 

They slow dance, perhaps a little too slow, swaying, and Sehun lets his head fall on Zitao’s shoulder. 

Sehun’s eyes are closed, so he doesn’t notice immediately when the lights flicker out, but when the jukebox stops playing and Zitao’s humming and their breathing are the only sounds left, he looks up, only to find pitch black. 

It must be a blackout, and they’re fairly frequent in the town, so he doubts it’s an issue. 

Zitao continues to hum, and so they continue to dance, as if nothing has happened, in the middle of a dark empty diner, with only each other. 

“Hum with me,” Zitao whispers, and Sehun wishes he could see his face, but the darkness has its own charm, one that makes him feel like it’s only him and Zitao. For now, he supposes it is. 

“I don’t know this song,” Sehun whispers back. 

“Please?”

And Sehun does.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> i hope that if there is anything that you take away from this, it is that the universe is kind to everything it touches, as long as you are kind to it. thank you for reading, and i really hope you enjoyed! tell me anything you need to in the comments!  
> You can find me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/hztwsx) and also on [Tumblr](https://hztwsx.tumblr.com/).
> 
> (and yes, grapes are berries)


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